Democrats ‘love murders and carjackings and armed robberies:’ JD Vance tells Wisconsin

The vice president came to a swing congressional district in a swing state to sell the Trump-GOP megabill of big cuts and deficit spending — by trying to change the subject to familiar scare tactics.

Vice President JD Vance used a metal fabrication shop in La Crosse to fabricate a false narrative about the massive budget cuts and deficit spending Republicans have enacted. His speech — delivered in a venue chosen to prop up US Rep. Derrick Van Orden in one of the country’s few competitive congressional districts — focused on the fear, crime, and the inaccurate claim that immigrant workers are getting an outsized share of the benefits the Trump administration is cutting. Instead, those cuts will go to tax cuts that largely benefit the very wealthy.

Painting American cities awash in rampant drug use and greedy immigrants is part of an administration-wide effort to change the national conversation away from economic uncertainty stemming from Trump’s on-again, off-again trade war and a budget so unpopular the president is speculating out loud about a name change away from what he once dubbed a “big, beautiful bill.” 

Ever the dutiful soldier in the White House’s crusade during his Aug. 28 address, Vance repeatedly returned to a claim that the legislation will actually protect benefits like Medicaid and SNAP that were otherwise going to undocumented immigrants on a large scale, something repeatedly shown to be false. 

“We want you to earn a good living in your community,” Vance told the audience at Mid-City Steel. “We want you to be able to walk down a city street in broad daylight without getting mugged. We want you to be able to take your family out to a nice meal wherever you want to without the fear of violence from criminals, whether they’re domestic criminals or international drug cartels.” 

Vance did not go into detail on whether he believes the streets of La Crosse to be a hotbed of muggings or international drug cartels. The administration’s claims about crime in other cities have been repeatedly shown to be false or exaggerated, with crime rates going down in cities that have been begging Washington for more resources to address the root causes of crime.

But because many major cities are led by Democrats, Vance chose to put the issue of crime in a partisan frame — even claiming he and Trump believe Democrats embrace crime.

“The president said, ‘JD, I don’t know how I did it. I have actually got the Democrats to come out in defense of crime,’” Vance claims Trump told him over lunch. “If Donald Trump, who has reduced murders, carjackings, and armed robberies in 14 days in Washington, DC, and now you have national Democrats coming out and saying, ‘Oh, we love murders and carjackings and armed robberies,’ why won’t Democrats just use some common sense?  Wouldn’t it be nice if the Democrats just worked a little across the aisle for once?”

Vance’s remark was false. No national Democrats have come out to say they love murders, carjackings, or armed robberies. But that didn’t stop him from further disparaging the same people he claims should pursue bipartisanship.

Turning from Democrats to immigrants, a familiar target, Vance used the tail end of his speech — five straight paragraphs — to hit a xenophobic note over and over.

“[Democrats] want to give more and more of your health care to illegal immigrants and that’s exactly why they voted against this bill,” Vance claimed. “I’ll give you guys just a little bit of relationship advice. Find yourself somebody who loves you as much as national Democrats love giving health care benefits to illegal aliens. That’s my advice for you. Because it is, as far as I can tell, the reason why the national Democratic Party exists.”

The insults are designed to act as a smokescreen from the nearly $1 trillion in healthcare cuts to Medicaid that Vance, Trump, and congressional Republicans passed into law this summer.

Vance briefly attempted to touch on some of the substance of the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” by touting tax cuts on overtime and tip income and some mild income tax relief. But there are limits to those cuts that are not being widely reported — like how the overtime tax cut only applies to the “half” of the “time and a half” pay and is capped at $12,500 per year and how the lower taxes on tips only applies to taxable income, which leaves out a lot of low-wage workers.