On July 5, Vice President Vance spoke at a right-wing think tank, the Claremont Institute. Allegedly he was there to speak about “statesmanship” but in fact, he decided to use the opportunity to bash what he called “the left” and to present his idea as to what defines American citizenship. Both of these sections of his speech involve dangerous nonsense – as well as outright lies. Unfortunately, even in this longer version I cannot discuss the entire speech so I will restrict myself to his main themes.
[FOR THE ENTIRE Transcript, see: “JD Vance’s Speech at The Claremont Institute’s Statesmanship Award Event]
Available here.
His first theme --- to which he returned at the end of his speech --- was an attack on the “American left.”
“I think it’s worth reflecting on the American left in 2025 because if you’re anything like me, I was very optimistic that the left had had such a beating in the 2024 elections that they might have a come-to-Jesus moment. They might look around and say, you know, maybe the American people are not going to go for grown men beating up women in girls’ sports. Maybe the American people are not going to go for a wide-open southern border that has allowed tens of millions of people to come into our country, undercutting the wages of American workers and, of course, making our society much less safe.”
Notice --- he doesn’t touch the most important goals of the “American left” --- to pass a bill making reproductive rights the law of the land, to reduce economic inequality, restore democratic voting rights, and take action to slow climate change and mitigate the effects of it. That’s of course because, all those goals are wildly popular among the general public.
But let’s take a look at his description of what “the American left” wants.
Let’s start with the idea of “open borders.” According to government statistics, after a big jump in “encounters” on the Southwest border of the US in fiscal year 2023 (October 2022 to September 2023) there was a marked decline for all of calendar year 2023 and that continued through December of 2024. The decline was significant -- from 250,000 to 100,000. Note, in no way did that allow “tens of millions” of people to come into our country. The total number of so-called illegals in the country in 2022 was estimated at about 11 million --- many of whom have been in the country five, ten, twenty years – even more. So what’s up with “tens of millions” coming into the country while Biden was President? It’s an outright lie --- which of course he can get away with because of the audience to which he was speaking and the inability of the mainstream media to call out every dishonest rhetorical flourish. But please note --- this is a man with a law degree. He knows the real numbers. [For a detailed diagram see this.
Next argument — immigrants are undercutting the wages of American workers. I will discuss that later in this essay.
His third assertion is that the left’s support for the rights of trans-gendered people means they want to see “grown men beating up women in girls’ sports?” The city of San Francisco issued a report responding to the widespread hysteria exemplified by that assertion. [See “Trans Women in Sports: Facts over Fear,” available here. Trans-women have been competing at least since Renee Richards played in tennis tournaments in the 1970s. There is no evidence that trans-women have any advantages over people born as women === and as the article points out they represent a miniscule number of participants in women’s sports: “0.002% (10/500.000) of US college athletes and even fewer of recent Olympians --- (0.001%) identify as trans.”
Next, he decides to attack the Democratic nominee for Mayor of New York City – Zohran Mamdani. “…a 33-year-old communist… “
That first line is enough to refute Vance. Free buses and a rent freeze is hardly “communism.” But if anyone’s interested there is a detailed presentation of Mamdani’s platform here. Among other things he wants to raise the NYC income tax on millionaires and corporations. He wants to raise the minimum wage to $30 an hour by 2030. He wants to try an experiment with city-owned grocery stores in underserved neighborhoods. It’s definitely a left-wing agenda but “communist”? Come on!
Vice President Vance then spends four paragraphs attempting to show that based on the precincts that Mamdani won, he is the candidate of college – educated (mostly white) elite voters who feel their incomes aren’t high enough.
There is a NY Times article with detailed voter breakdowns which shows that Vance is cherry-picking and that Mamdani has put together a very impressive coalition — https://www.michaellange.nyc/p/the-zohran-coalition
Then Vance drops this contradictory gem: “Consider a movement that rails against the billionaire class, despite the fact that the billionaire class remains firmly in the corner of the modern left. A movement that idolizes foreign religions, even as it rejects the teachings of those faiths. It rails this new modern left against white people, even as many of its funders and its grassroots activists are privileged whites themselves.”
First of all, he had just argued that it was high income college educated whites whose incomes are not “high enough” who supported Mamdani and now he’s suddenly claiming the billionaire class is “firmly in the corner of the modern left.” This is laughable on its face as anyone who examines the donors to Trump and Trumpism knows. And how come all these billionaires are threatening to leave NYC if Mamdani is elected if they are “in the corner of the modern left?” Remember, Vance went to Law School and should know how to frame a convincing argument either orally or on paper.
Next he projects big time: “The radicals of the far left, they don’t need a unifying ideology of what they’re for, because they know very well what they’re against. …They hate the people in this room. They hate the President of the United States. And most of all, they hate the people who voted for that President of the United States in the last election in November. This is the animating principle of the American far left.”
Methinks the Vice President doth protest too much. Though Trump supporters come with many different opinions — some had previously voted for Barack Obama — some were interested in the views of Bernie Sanders --- the fact remains that a very large percentage of Trump supporters are motivated by significant resentment that often slides into hatred. Just check out the work of sociologist Arlie Hochschild in her recent book about a Trump voting county in Kentucky and her older book about a section of Louisiana seriously polluted by the petro-chemical industry where most of the resentments of the white population is focused on blacks who somehow “get ahead in line” when it comes to government benefits.
[See Arlie Russell Hochschild: Strangers in Their Own Land, (New Press, 2016) and Stolen Pride (New Press, 2024)]
Now it is probably fair to say that many of the people who voted against Donald Trump three times do hate --- at least hate what he stands for. And yes, the anti-Trump group is a very broad coalition. But Vance seems to think that because people within this group have differing views on, say, Israel and Gaza, or how local governments should best finance public safety that somehow that coalition is illegitimate? Even the pro-Trump Republican party has different views on, say, whether or not there is a “client list” somewhere of the now dead pedophile, Jeffry Epstein. What unites the anti-Trump coalition is the desire to save American democracy as we know it from authoritarianism --- I call it fascism --- even as they disagree about many other policy issues. Remember the Democratic Party that elected Franklin Roosevelt and pushed through the New Deal legislation included explicitly racist Southerners and black Americans from the north!
Finally in his speech, Vance gets into some more substance — … “[T]hey [the left] certainly don’t care that deporting low-wage immigrants will raise the wages of the native-born, because they don’t mean to create higher living standards for those who are born and raised here, whether they’re black, white, or any other skin color. They mean to replace those people with people who will listen to their increasingly bizarre ethnic and religious appeals. They are arsonists, and they will make common cause with anyone willing to light the match.”
His assertion flies in the face of evidence. [See the following study from Brookings: “ Based on a survey of the academic literature, economists do not tend to find that immigrants cause any sizeable decrease in wages and employment of U.S.-born citizens (Card 2005), and instead may raise wages and lower prices in the aggregate (Ottaviano and Peri 2008; Ottaviano and Peri 2010; Cortes 2008). One reason for this effect is that immigrants and U.S.-born workers generally do not compete for the same jobs; instead, many immigrants complement the work of U.S. employees and increase their productivity. For example, low-skilled immigrant laborers allow U.S.-born farmers, contractors, and craftsmen to expand agricultural production or to build more homes—thereby expanding employment possibilities and incomes for U.S. workers. Another way in which immigrants help U.S. workers is that businesses adjust to new immigrants by opening stores, restaurants, or production facilities to take advantage of the added supply of workers; more workers translate into more business.
Because of these factors, economists have found that immigrants slightly raise the average wages of all U.S.-born workers.”
Deporting immigrant workers who are crucial to agriculture, construction, meat-packing, care-giving – and other important service work will cause labor shortages. The resulting price increases will DECREASE real wages. There are no large reserves of American-born unemployed workers ready to take the jobs currently being done by immigrants – documented and undocumented. According to Newsweek
“An estimated four to five million undocumented migrants work in U.S. agriculture. About 40 percent of crop farm workers in the U.S. are undocumented, according to the Department of Agriculture.
In 2023, roughly 1.1 million undocumented workers were also employed in the hospitality sector—including hotels and restaurants—accounting for about 7.6 percent of the workforce, according to an analysis by the American Immigration Council.”
This is what led Trump to suggest that he needed to permit farmers to continue to hire the undocumented. Why would he do that if there are all these American workers just dying to take those jobs?
For details click here.
And buried in Vance. ’s last paragraph is the “great replacement theory.” “They mean to replace those people [native born Americans] with people who will listen to their increasingly bizarre ethnic and religious appeals [immigrants]!”
How will those native Americans be “replaced?” Mass murder? Or will they be outvoted by the “tens of millions” of undocumented immigrants who will vote illegally and overwhelm “real” Americans? Now it is true that some pundits have expressed concern that native born Americans are having “too few” children and that over time this has led to the “browning” of America. This sentence is Vance’s tip of the cap to that group.
Next Vance set himself the unenviable task of trying to argue that “unlike the left” which only knows what it is against, Donald Trump offered “a positive vision that people could get behind.” And then Vance created his version of Trump’s positive vision (which is nowhere to be found in any of Trump’s own speeches).
. Vance says, “We want to make it easier to save and invest in the United States of America. We want to make it easier to build a business in the United States of America. But most of all, we want to make it easier to work a dignified job in the United States of America and build the kind of life and have the kind of wage that can support a family in comfort. That is our goal…
[And yet the Trump Administration and their billionaire backers have done nothing to make it easier for workers to form unions and win the right to bargain collectively! Vance once supported raising the Federal Minimum Wage to $11 an hour but has been totally silent on that issues since becoming Vice President. Meanwhile Trump has spoken as if he were supportive of some raise to the minimum wage but took no action to actually accomplish that during his first administration.]
(Back to Vance). “Every Western society, as I stand here today, has significant demographic and cultural problems. There is something about Western liberalism that seems almost suicidal, or at least socially parasitic, that tends to feed off of a healthy host until there’s nothing left. That’s why the demographic trends across the West are so bad, … And I think what that is, is they’ve gotten awfully good at tearing things down, but they haven’t gotten good at building back. That’s what we have to do. America in 25 is more diverse than it has ever been. And yet, the institutions that take this incredibly diverse country and form culture are weaker than they have ever been. While our elites tell us that diversity is our greatest strength, they destroy the very institutions that allow us to thrive and build a common sense of purpose and meaning as Americans.
… Now, too many of our current crop of statesmen remain unable to break out of that moment, that crazy moment of a few years ago. They’re not as loud about it, but they’re still very much animated by its principles. Too many on the far left seem destined to erode the very thing that makes Americans put on a uniform and sacrifice their lives for our common nation.
Now, part of the solution, I think the most important part of the solution, is you first got to stop the bleeding. And that’s why President Trump’s immigration policies are, I believe, the most important part of the successful first six months in the Oval Office. Social bonds form among people who have something in common. They share the same neighborhood. They share the same church. They send their kids to the same school. And what we’re doing is recognizing that if you stop importing millions of foreigners into the country, you allow that social cohesion to form naturally. It’s hard to become neighbors with your fellow citizens when your own government keeps on importing new neighbors every single year at a record number.”
[Of course, most immigrants tend to settle where there are already immigrant communities --- thus, these new immigrants share common experiences and cultures with previously arrived immigrants --- think of the role of the Catholic Church in integrating the Irish into American society during the 19th century and what it has done to integrate Latinos from the various Spanish-speaking countries in the 20th century.]
So there you have it. According to Vice President Vance, the increased number of immigrants [and please note he makes no distinction between legal immigrants and so-called “illegals.”] makes it impossible to get to know and befriend your neighbors. You need people to have grown up together in the same neighborhoods to form social cohesion. And then he gets to his major second point. If his first point was to trash the left – and specifically Zohran Mamdani – his second point is to very cleverly (so you almost don’t notice) privilege those Americans who have been here longer over those who have just become naturalized or born.
“But even so, if you were to ask yourself in 2025 what an American is, I hate to say it, very few of our leaders actually have a good answer. Is it purely agreement with the creedal principles of America?… If you think about it, identifying America just with agreeing with the principles, let’s say, of the Declaration of Independence, that’s a definition that is way over-inclusive and under-inclusive at the same time. What do I mean by that? Well, first of all, it would include hundreds of millions, maybe billions of foreign citizens who agree with the principles of the Declaration of Independence. Must we admit all of them tomorrow? If you follow that logic of America as a purely creedal nation, America purely as an idea, that is where it would lead you.”
OK let’s stop right here. Up until the passage of the laws that severely restricted immigration passed in the 1920s, the United States had (almost) open borders. Under the “naturalization act” of 1790 a would-be citizen had to swear an oath of support for the US Constitution. That was sufficient. (Except you had to be white to become a citizen – a blemish that was cured by the 1870 amendment to this law --- which permitted black immigrants to become naturalized while also explicitly denying naturalization to other non-whites, specifically Asians.). So up until the 1920s, anyone who wanted to become an American who wasn’t from China or Japan could.
I say THAT is the answer to Vance’s question. An American is anybody, anywhere in the world, who WANTS to be an American and wants to take an oath to support the United States Constitution – an oath by the way, that Trump and all the members of his Administration have taken and violated from Day One! Of course, there is a process of how to become an American and given the inability of Congress to agree on how to fix our immigration system such a process can take a very long time. Nevertheless, there is a perfectly straightforward answer to Vance’s question.
Then VP Vance really goes off the rails: “But at the same time, that answer [agreeing with the Declaration of Independence as to the basic rights of all people] would also reject a lot of people that the ADL [Anti-Defamation League] would label as domestic extremists. Even those very Americans [who] had their ancestors fight in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War.”
Note here he is not so subtly embracing those who fought on the side of the Confederacy in the Civil War. --- [I wonder if Vance would acknowledge that the Southern War against the United States --- fought to defend the institution of slavery – was an act of Treason --- the greatest act of Treason in American history]. He is also subtly hinting that members of the Ku Klux Klan have the same citizenship claims as their critics in the ADL.
(By the way, according to the 14th Amendment this is true. Anyone born or naturalized in the United States is a citizen entitled to all the rights and privileges of any other American. This applies to members of the KKK as well as to the children of undocumented immigrants.)
Here’s Vance again. “And I happen to think that it’s absurd, and the modern left seems dedicated to doing this, to saying, you don’t belong in America unless you agree with progressive liberalism in 2025. I think the people whose ancestors fought in the Civil War have a hell of a lot more claim over America than the people who say they don’t belong.”
Here's the main point of his speech --- Those whose ancestors fought in the Civil War have “more claim over America” than people like me who call those confederates traitors. But he’s being clever and subtle. Many might miss that he is granting privileged citizenship to those who fought in the Civil War over those who fought to overturn Jim Crow in the 1960s and since. In effect, Vance is claiming some “super-citizenship” depending on how long your family has been here (and let’s not forget his boss is trying to get the Supreme Court to END birthright citizenship – that is to repeal the 14th Amendment.)
But lots of Trump supporters didn’t miss that “hint” in Vance’s speech because the Trump coalition includes all those who refused to accept the results of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and are busy turning back the clock on the Voting Rights Act of 1965 with voter suppression laws in over 30 states.
So Vance is redefining citizenship:
“What does it mean to be an American in 2025?
For one, I think it has to mean sovereignty. More precisely, American citizenship must mean belonging to a nation that guards the sovereignty of its people, especially from a modern world that’s hell-bent on dissolving borders and differences in national character.”
[In other words, let’s build walls that keep the American nation the way we want it (or the way we wanted it back in the 1950s?)]
“… I’d also say that citizenship in the 21st century necessarily means building. Because America is not just an idea, we’re a particular place with a particular people and a particular set of beliefs and way of life. Our ancestors realized that to carve a successful nation from new land meant creating new tangible things. New homes, new towns, new infrastructure to tame a wild continent. That is our heritage as Americans. That attitude enabled us to build the world’s greatest cities, its tallest skyscrapers, the most impressive dams and canals that the world had ever seen.
Over time, of course, it expanded the horizons of what we even thought possible as human beings. With Americans taking our species into the air and just a generation later into Earth’s orbit. Our innovations, American innovations, revolutionized communications, medicine, and agriculture, extending human lifespan decades at a time. And none of that would be possible if our citizens believed we lived in a post-industrial era. You can’t get to the moon on financial derivatives. You get to the moon on engineering and on building things.”
These two paragraphs are utter nonsense – the richest people in the United States including the man who financed J.D. Vance’s political rise are people who got rich in finance. Elon Musk might be known for TESLA but he got rich in financial services as did Peter Thiel the man whose money made Vance a Senator. Second, the United States got to the moon on taxpayer dollars --- not private enterprise. Almost all the great building that Vance describes in these paragraphs are the result of direct government investments (NY State dug the Erie Canal) or subsidies (massive land grants to railroad companies so they could sell land along the right-of-way to finance the construction --- a major military push to eliminate the plains Indians so the railroads could safely be built). The internet itself is a result of Defense Department expenditures to “harden” the communications systems of our armed forces. Vance doesn’t mention that to his audience at a pro-private enterprise think tank, but the policies of the Trump Administration are already attempting to gut the government workforce and it is the “American Left” that is attempting to protect and expand the role of the public sector in the US economy.
Vance finishes with:
“Lastly, I’d say citizenship must mean recognizing the unique relationship, but also the obligations that we all share with our fellow Americans. You cannot swap 10 million people from anywhere else in the world and expect for America to remain unchanged…
And I think it’s impossible to feel a sense of obligation to something without having gratitude for it. We should demand that our people, whether first or tenth generation Americans, have gratitude for this country.”
Where’s he going with this gratitude point? – Wait and see.
“… we should expect everyone in our country, whether their ancestors were here before the Revolutionary War, or whether they arrived on our shores just a few short months ago, to feel a sense of gratitude. And we should be skeptical of anyone who lacks it, especially if they purport to lead this great country.
And that brings me back, finally, to the next likely mayor of New York. Today is July 5th, 2025, which means, as all of you know, that yesterday we celebrated the 249th anniversary of the birth of our nation. Now the person who wishes to lead our largest city had, according to multiple media reports, never once publicly mentioned America’s Independence Day in earnest. But when he did so this year, this is what he said, and this is an actual quote.
“America is beautiful, contradictory, unfinished. I am proud of our country even as we constantly strive to make it better.”
[THIS IS WHAT Zohran Mamdani said – how is Vance going to trash that actually beautiful and accurate statement?]
There is no gratitude in those words. No sense of owing something to this land … he dares on our 249th anniversary to congratulate it by paying homage to its incompleteness and to its, as he calls it, contradiction.
… This country is not a contradiction. It’s a nation of countless extraordinary people across many generations. It’s a land of profound ingenuity and tradition and beauty. But more importantly, it’s our home. For the vast bulk of Americans, it’s where we’re born, it’s where we will raise our children and grandchildren, and it’s where we ourselves will one day be laid to rest.”
First of all, Mamdani said the country was “contradictory” – that means there are elements moving in the “right” (=correct) direction – like increasing rights for women and gays for example and elements moving in the opposite direction (voter suppression, rounding up immigrants and sometimes grabbing legal residents by “mistake.”)
Both of these are happening in the country – they are contradictory. IN Vance’s own speech he attacked liberal politicians who he said have failed America --- From his perspective aren’t all those people on the left that he attacks in “contradiction” to the Trump movement that he praises?
Second point – Mamdani states that America is “incomplete.” Vance doesn’t even dare respond to that assertion because everyone looking at this nation knows that Mamdani is right --- The preamble of the Constitution notes that same point when it starts: “We, the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union ….” Would Vance not agree that in the era when women didn’t have the right to vote our society was “incomplete”? Would he also not agree that in the era of Jim Crow our society was “incomplete?” Donald Trump stated that the United States was in danger of falling apart before he was elected President in 2016 --- remember he promised “This American carnage stops now!” in his inaugural address. And during Biden’s years didn’t Donald Trump say over and over again that Biden’s policies were destroying America (and Vance echoed that argument in his speech).
Here is one juicy nugget from a Press Conference Trump had on July 16 [July 16 of THIS year – 2025!] "One year ago, … we were a dead country. We were laughed at all over the world."
Does Vance believe the United States suddenly became “perfect” when Trump was inaugurated for a second time? IF so, why does Trump have to engage in mass deportation and get a “Big Beautiful Bill” through Congress? Has the Trump “revival” of America been completed?
I hope those who have taken the trouble to read this (admittedly long piece) will think about what it means for a man of Vance’s education and learning and experience – a Vice President of the United States – to speak such dangerous, dishonest nonsense.
And except for a handful of media references to his privileging those who fought in the Civil War, the media has mostly ignored this speech --- which is a pity.
Michael Meeropol is professor emeritus of Economics at Western New England University. He is the author with Howard and Paul Sherman of the recently published second edition of Principles of Macroeconomics: Activist vs. Austerity Policies.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.