J.D. Vance Promises to Renew America ‘With God’s Grace,’ But Overlooks Life, Gender Extremism, in RNC Speech

By: Ben Johnson, originally published July 18, 2024, The Washington Stand

Republican vice presidential candidate Senator J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) promised he and President Donald Trump would remember the forgotten, faithful Americans in small towns and overlooked areas nationwide, ushering in a national renewal “by God’s grace.” Yet, some supporters noted with disappointment, his speech at the Republican National Convention Wednesday did not address the issues of abortion, transgender extremism, or parental rights.

“Tonight is a night of hope — a celebration of what America once was, and with God’s grace, what it will soon be again,” Vance told delegates. He felt the hand of history calling him and President Trump to carry out “sacred duty we have to preserve the American experiment, to choose a new path for our children and grandchildren.”

Vance began by praising the courage of President Donald Trump after Saturday’s attempted assassination. “When Donald Trump rose to his feet in that Pennsylvania field, all of America stood with him,” Vance declared. “And what did he call for us to do for his country? To fight. To fight for America.” Trump’s running mate then remembered the retried fire chief killed in the assassination attempt as he sheltered his wife and daughter, Corey Comperatore, “who gave his life to protect his family. God bless him.”

“Even in his most perilous moment we were on his mind. His instinct was for us, for our country,” he said.

Family became a leitmotif of Vance’s speech. After being introduced by his wife, Usha, Vance said proudly, “My most important American dream was becoming a good husband and a good dad.” He sent his greetings to their three children — Ewan, age 7; Vivek, 4; and Mirabel, 2 — before playfully telling them to go to bed.

Vance — who wrote eloquently of overcoming crushing Appalachian poverty and generational addiction in his bestselling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” — praised the grandmother who raised him, whom he called “Mamaw,” calling her his “guardian angel.” He described her as “a woman of contradictions,” a “woman of very deep Christian faith.”

“She loved the Lord,” said Vance. “But she also loved the f-word. I’m not kidding. She could make a sailor blush.”

In the emotional highlight of the convention to date, Vance shared a tender moment with his mother, who struggled with addiction throughout his childhood. “I’m proud to say that tonight my mom is here, 10 years clean and sober. I love you, Mom,” he said.

His teary-eyed mother rose to her feet as she received thunderous applause. She can be seen telling the man seated to her right, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.), “That’s my boy.”

Vance’s life story has informed his politics from his earliest days. He mentioned his hometown of

Middletown, Ohio, “a small town where people spoke their minds, built with their hands, and loved their God, their family, their community and their country with their whole hearts.” Yet it has become “a place that had been cast aside and forgotten by America’s ruling class in Washington.”

He criticized Joe Biden for supporting the NAFTA free trade agreement with Mexico in 1993, admitting China to the World Trade Organization (which slashed U.S. tariffs against the Communist regime and cost American workers millions of jobs) in 1999, and standing by “the disastrous invasion of Iraq” as late as the 2008 Democratic primaries. As a result, “our country was flooded with cheap Chinese goods, with cheap foreign labor— and in the decades to come, deadly Chinese fentanyl.”

“For half-a-century, he’s been the champion of every major policy initiative to make America weaker and poorer,” said Vance. “And in four short years, Donald Trump reversed decades of betrayals inflicted by Joe Biden and the rest of the corrupt Washington insiders.”

In an apparent reference to accusations that Biden sold influence during his five-decade life in politics, Vance said, “America’s ruling class wrote the checks. Communities like mine paid the price.”

Vance noted that workers’ wages, stagnant in inflation-adjusted dollar terms since the early 1970s, soared during the first Trump administration. After adjusting for inflation, average weekly earnings for all workers rose by 8.7% during the Trump administration. “Wages for rank-and-file production and nonsupervisory workers — who make up 81% of all private-sector workers — went up 9.8% under Trump,” according to FactCheck.org, which has not been noted for its bias toward Trump. That’s nearly double the rate of the Obama-Biden administration, which had the most dismal economic growth of the postwar era.

American citizens’ economic progress came to a startling halt during the Biden administration. The average wealth of a worker “making the median wage or less has risen by a total of $4,000,” reported CBS News in February 2020. Economist Art Laffer put the middle-class pay increase at $6,000 during the Trump years. “Bureau of Labor Statistics data found that real average hourly earnings for all private sector employees have decreased by 2.24% between January 2021 to May 2024,” stated FactCheck in June. The average American has to spend $11,400 more in the Biden administration to have that same level of living, according to a report released by Republican members of the U.S. Senate Joint Economic Committee in late 2023.

Under President Trump, “workers’ wages went through the roof. Just imagine what he can do with four more years in the White House,” said Vance.

Vance noted the role of massive, uncontrolled, immigration to the United States in raising costs and denying American citizens jobs. Including “gotaways,” Border Patrol agents estimate a total of 10 million illegal border crossings took place during the Biden administration — a figure larger than the population of 41 U.S. states — including a 5,000% increase in illegal immigrants hailing from China. Government programs for illegal immigrants imposed a net cost of $150.7 billion on U.S. taxpayers in 2023, according to calculations from the Federation for American Immigration Reform. “Each illegal alien or U.S.-born child of illegal aliens costs the U.S. $8,776 annually,” FAIR found.

“We’re done … catering to Wall Street. We’ll commit to the working man,” declared Vance. “We’re done importing foreign labor, we’re going to fight for American citizens and their good jobs and their good wages. We’re done buying energy from countries that hate us.”

He promised to “stop the Chinese Communist Party from building their middle class on the backs of American citizens.”

Vance used his personal rags-to-RNC story to illustrate the inverted morality and flawed reasoning of critical race theory and woke ideology that lay behind racially-discriminatory education and hiring policies branded under the label “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI). He noted his family comes from eastern Kentucky, one of the 10 poorest counties in the United States. But the hardworking people of Appalachia “would give you the shirt off their back even if they can’t afford enough to eat. And our media calls them privileged and looks down on them.”

But his fellow American citizens “love this country, not only because it’s a good idea, but because in their bones they know that this is their home, and it will be their children’s home, and they would die fighting to protect it. That is the source of America’s greatness.”

Aside from a handful of passing references to God and faith, Vance made his speech’s only reference to religious liberty when he denied the “propositional nation” thesis that the United States was dedicated to an idea, with no greater loyalty to its citizens than individuals anywhere in the world who hold to the same idea. This philosophy has been used to justify mass migration and political policies that value those residents, legal or illegal, on equal or better terms than native-born Americans. 

“America was, indeed, founded on brilliant ideas like the rule of law and religious liberty — things written into the fabric of our Constitution and our nation. But America is not just an idea. It is a group of people, with a shared history and a common future. It is, in short, a nation,” said Vance. “It is part of that, tradition, of course, that we welcome newcomers. But when we allow newcomers into our American family, we allow them on our terms.” 

Vance’s speech made no reference to abortion or social issues generally — a fact that surprised some observers. “J.D. Vance grew up in poverty with an abusive, drug addicted single mother. His life encompasses many of the reasons people push abortion. He is now running for Vice President of the United States despite hardship, but his life was inherently valuable all along,” said Christine Yeargin, who hosts Students for Life’s “Speak Out” podcast. 

Although Vance ignored the issue of abortion and the RNC has generally remained mum about it, the Biden-Harris campaign held a full-length press event on Wednesday attacking Vance as an alleged pro-life extremist. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D) called Vance “the perfect Frankenstein monster created by the Heritage Foundation” at the event. Biden-Harris 2024 Deputy Campaign Manager Quentin Fulks assailed “J.D. Vance’s extreme anti-reproductive freedom agenda” and attacked “a Trump-Vance administration who will ban abortion nationwide.”

“Women’s lives have been transformed irrevocably, and that is the dark vision that Donald Trump and J.D. Vance have for all women across America,” said Biden-Harris 2024 Campaign Co-Chair Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas). “We recognize that abortion is health care,” said Escobar, who called pro-life protections “deadly and dangerous and harmful.”

Walz also claimed Vance threatened the nation by not objecting to President Trump’s questions about the 2020 election and not endorsing NATO firmly enough.

Although Vance has spoken eloquently about the importance of family, his speech mentioned nothing about restoring parental rights over education, safeguarding the parents’ rights to control what their children learn about controversial issues such as extreme gender ideology, or protecting children from the predatory transgender industry—issues which enjoy the support of a significant majority of Americans.

Rather than maintain the pro-life rhetoric that elevated him to the U.S. Senate two years ago, Vance opaquely referenced broad differences within the GOP. “We have a big tent in this party,” he said, adding, “We are united to win. … I think our disagreements actually make us stronger.”

He instead focused on a national unity that puts Americans first. “America is a nation, and its citizens deserve leaders who put its interests first,” said Vance. “We need a leader who fights for the people who built this country. We need a leader who’s not in the pocket of Big Business, but answers to the working man, union and non-union alike. A leader who won’t sell out to multinational corporations but will stand up for American companies and American industry. A leader who rejects Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s Green New Scam and fights to bring back our great American factories.”

“I promise you this: I will be a vice president who never forgets where he came from,” said Vance.

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.