If the vice president gives a campaign speech, does it make noise?
The irony of modern elections, where everything a politician says behind a microphone is broadcast live, is that few of their words are heard outside the room. Since the Republicans’ midterm convention, which failed to give their party the momentum it hoped for, the front-runner for the next GOP nomination has headlined four rallies for red-state Republicans — in Iowa, North Carolina, Texas and Florida.
Local coverage focused on a few remarks tailored to their states, such as Vice President JD Vance’s plea in Iowa for Congress to enact the year-round sale of E15. National coverage focuses on what the trip means, what Vance’s plans for 2028 are, or what color the House and Senate map is. Information happens offstage, in interviews, outside of what the pool cameras pick up. And when he says that the Democratic candidate from Florida for the Senate does not have “his place in America”, reports of clips will appear there.
The content of Vance’s half-hour speeches at campaign rallies is worth watching on its own, to understand how he might run for president — only his third campaign ever — and what that means about Republican politics in a soon-to-be post-Trump world.
Vance’s goal is to pursue Project 2024: a populist, multiracial Republican Party that eliminates left-wing ideology from public life. How can he sell that to voters who fear they didn’t get the economy they voted for? How would he argue for another four-year lease on MAGA in 2028? We discover it, in 30-minute increments.
He describes a comeback in the economy that the media is not adequately covering, with a drop in crime and unemployment due to mass deportations, tariffs and presidential speeches. He attacks Democrats as elitists who deny the “dignity of raising your children according to your values,” as he said in Texas.
“Are we going to vote for someone who says you’re a child molester because you don’t want your kids to be trans? » he said later in that speech.
Like the president, Vance describes Democrats as dishonest, complacent and often stupid. In Iowa, after declaring that some politicians were “good at saying nothing,” he raised his right hand to his mouth to whisper on stage: “AOC.” The running mate who mocked Kamala Harris’s “word salad” and joked that she had been loaded is a rhetorical sniper — but now as an outgoing president, trying to sell an economy that voters like less than the one they remembered when they cast their ballots in 2024.
Unlike Donald Trump, Vance sticks to his guns — unless hecklers interrupt him, as they did Thursday in Lakeland, Florida. He describes the “mess” that “Sleepy Joe and Kamala” left behind and sticks to the GOP line that 2026 is a choice between “common sense and insanity.”
In every state, he celebrates the creation of a million American jobs since he and Trump were sworn in, drawing some applause; he mentions that all the jobs went to the citizens, which draws more and more applause. (At this point in Trump’s first term, Republicans were campaigning on creating eight million new jobs.) The border is closed, crime is at its lowest level in over a century, and taxes have been cut, with no help from Democrats.
The rest of the message is polished throughout, as Vance tells the story of a president who does the right thing for ordinary people — “not the lobbyists, not the bureaucrats, not the people who have run Washington, D.C., for decades,” as he said in Greensboro, North Carolina. Trump is a populist battering ram, charging not only the “crazy” left, but also parts of American business.
Most voters are not convinced that the first 20 months of this administration have improved the economy. In his first post-convention rallies, Vance never mentioned the war in Iran, nor specifically addressed his frustration with high gas prices. He recognizes that the Republicans have their work cut out for them.
“I know there are people who are frustrated with the pace of progress as we dig this hole,” he said in Harlingen. “Look, sometimes I get frustrated. » But the Republicans don’t have much to atone for. Even when a number is moving in the wrong direction, it is moving in the right direction.
How can we explain why inflation is about as high today as it was on Inauguration Day?
“Under their leadership, they had 8% inflation under Joe Biden,” Vance said in Florida. “And in 2025, we brought it below 2%. And so far in 2026, we brought it below 3%.”
Vance’s record against Democrats on the ballot is less thorough. Everyone hears about the tweets from William Lawrence of Michigan, condemning the nuclear family, and Darializa Avila Chevalier of New York, about how July 4 should be about the liberation of Palestine and Puerto Rico.
“I try to imagine the founding fathers, with their pens, sitting down and thinking about the liberation of Palestine and Puerto Rico,” he said in Greensboro. Local Democrats have other problems — usually left-wing statements or gender opinions they’re afraid to talk about now. In North Carolina, he attacked former Governor Roy Cooper, the Democratic candidate for US Senate, for recognizing “Gender-Conscious Parents Day”; in Iowa, he asked why gubernatorial candidate Rob Sand would “passionately advocate for a children’s book about non-binary parents and poly families.” Are these Democrats evil? It was worth asking.
“If your six-year-old son comes home one day and says he’s a girl,” Talafreako said, “and I quote, it’s abusive—abusive!—if you don’t let school officials put him on hormones and change his pronouns,” Vance said of Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico in Harlingen. “You have to ask yourself: What really motivates a man who spends so much time talking about 11-year-old drag queens?”
In Harlingen, a part of the Rio Grande Valley where the pro-Trump shift was most dramatic that year, Vance accused the left of trying to “distract” nonwhite people with “this lie that we should hate each other.” The mountain man and the tejano could be friends.
“I see, of course, an incredible diversity of backgrounds just in that Texas 34 crowd,” Vance said, in front of a largely Latino crowd. “And I can tell you that yes, my skin can burn in the sun a little easier than some of yours. But for generations, people like your grandparents and my parents, and my grandparents and my parents, what did we do? We drove the trucks. We tended the fields. We took care of the sick and the elderly. We mined our coal. And of course, we fought our wars.”
In a few months, this could be the message from the likely Republican presidential candidate. Midterm comes first.
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