Manufacturing, immigration, crime, the economy, and alleged election fraud in 2020 dominated JD Vance‘s Saturday two speeches in Pennsylvania, just weeks out from the election.
Speaking at a Saturday afternoon rally in Johnstown, the Ohio Senator and Republican vice-presidential candidate spoke for 40 minutes, in what has become a routine stop on the campaign trail. The Keystone State is a vital part of both candidates’ strategy to win the White House.
Johnstown is a small city of less than 20,000 inhabitants which has suffered decades of industrial decline following the closure of its steel mills and coal mines.
It has featured on the campaign trails of both presidential candidates as well as Vance. Vice President Kamala Harris visited some local businesses there in September, and Donald Trump held a rally in the city in August.
JD Vance speaks during a campaign Town Hall on Saturday, October 12, 2024, in Reading, Pennsylvania. Manufacturing, immigration, crime, the economy, and alleged election fraud in 2020 dominated JD Vance’s two Saturday speeches in Pennsylvania.
Laurence Kesterson/ASSOCIATED PRESS
The repeated visits are emblematic to of the critical role Rust Belt cities, which lost most of their manufacturing economies decades ago, played in electing Trump in 2016, on his America-first manufacturing platform.
They were then crucial in electing President Joe Biden, who in 2020 campaigned as a pro-union, pro-manufacturing candidate who came from coal-mining Scranton, Pennsylvania.
In his 40-minute speech, Vance addressed Johnstown’s industrial heritage, casting himself and Trump as the candidates who would deport millions of “illegal aliens” to secure its economic future, and casting Harris as a candidate who would do nothing to prevent its decline.
He also continued to suggest that the 2020 election was unfair, following on from his Friday New York Times interview, in which he declined five times to acknowledge that Trump lost the election to Biden.
Later in the afternoon, he held a town-hall style rally in Reading, in eastern Pennsylvania, where he took questions from the audience and addressed the importance of voter turnout, home ownership, energy costs, and the need to “drain the swamp” of allegedly corrupt officials in the FBI and Justice Department.
Here five key takeaways from the events.
Capitol Rioters Were “Knuckleheads” and Trump Is Not To Blame
A reporter asked Vance whether he condemned the riot at on January 6, 2021, where Trump‘s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in order to disrupt the certification of Biden’s victory.
In response, Vance said he did condemn the riot, but he denied that Trump was responsible for the actions of the rioters and insisted that there was a “peaceful transfer of power” in 2020.
“Donald Trump asked people to protest peacefully,” Vance said. “He had every right to encourage people 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, that’s on them.”
This answer diverges slightly from Trump’s own view, which has repeatedly been the rioters, over 1,200 of whom have been criminally charged, were not “knuckleheads,” but rather were “patriots.”
He has insisted he would pardon them if elected to a second term. However, like Vance, Trump denied any involvement in the riot, stating during his September debate with Harris, “That had nothing to do with me.”
Trump’s alleged involvement in the lead-up to the riot is subject to an ongoing federal criminal case in Washington D.C., which is currently going through pretrial motions.
Trump and Vance Would Clean House at the FBI and the DOJ
Vance told a story about an FBI field agent who he said told him that the agency’s leadership is “so broken.”
“You’ve got to clean house, and that’s what we’re going to do,” Vance said. “We’re going to fire the people who are responsible for the corruption of our Department of Justice.
“Trump got famous firing people and it’s funny, you know, that’s the kind of person you actually want cleaning house in Washington D.C.”
Newsweek has contacted the Department of Justice and the FBI via email for comment.
Trump and other Republicans have accused the Justice Department of being corrupt for bringing charges against the former president, and the FBI of engaging in numerous alleged politically motivated conspiracies against Trump and other conservatives.
Lower Housing Costs by Deregulating, Drilling, and Deporting
In response to a question about the increasing unaffordability of housing, Vance listed some of Trump’s economic policies which involve removing regulations, drilling for more oil, and deporting migrants.
Repeating the slogan, “drill baby, drill,” Vance argued that by increasing oil production, energy costs would decrease, which would lead to lower housing costs.
He also argued that excessive regulation was holding back housing development, and that American citizens were suffering due to having to compete with undocumented immigrants in the housing market.
“Unless we have American homes (…) going to American citizens, we are never going to make the American dream of home ownership affordable,” Vance said.
The U.S. Would Currently Lose a War With China
Vance argued that China would be able to win a war with the U.S. due to its superior manufacturing capacity.
“God forbid, let’s say we get into a war with China, and I certainly hope that doesn’t happen, but those commercial ships [sic] are going to start building warships very quickly,” Vance said.
“And this is the secret of why did we win the Second World War? Well of course we had the bravest people, and we had the best troops, but we had the world’s industrial might. No one could compete with America’s manufacturing sector.”
Vance argued that creating a regulatory environment which made it easier for businesses to manufacture in America was therefore not just economically essential, but also in the country’s national security interests.
Republicans Are Ahead in Voter Registrations in Pennsylvania
Vance said that Pennsylvania Republicans are “knocking it out of the park” in relation to voter registrations.
“We are actually tracking some of this registration stuff,” Vance said. “Things are moving in the right direction and that’s a very good thing.”
This year has seen rising Republican registrations in the Keystone State. Spotlight PA reported in September that in 2024, the Democrats have had their weakest voter registration advantage compared to Republicans in decades
As of September 16, Democrats made up 44 percent of registered voters in the commonwealth, down from a 2009 high of 51.2 percent, while Republicans were at 40.2 percent, up from 36.9 percent in 2009. Unaffiliated and third-party voters have boosted their numbers even more, from 11.9 percent in 2009 to 15.7 percent.
Newsweek has contacted the Harris and Trump campaigns via email for comment.
