AP Photo/Ben Gray
JD Vance spoke to blue-collar workers in Michigan on Wednesday, taking the Biden-Harris administration to task for its economic policies. It was one of several events being held across the Rust Belt by the vice presidential hopeful over the next several days, with a focus on drawing a contrast between the Trump campaign's willingness to answer questions and the Harris campaign's refusal to do so.
As of this writing, neither Kamala Harris nor Tim Walz has answered a single question in an interview or press conference. Vance has been holding them regularly, though, with Trump set to hold a second one in Bedminster, New Jersey, on Thursday.
While in Michigan, standing in front of a line of semi-trucks, Vance took a question from The New York Times. In what was an obvious jab at the Trump campaign's messaging, the reporter posited that inflation was now at the lowest point since mid-2021, fluffing Harris' economic record with a very purposeful complete lack of context. Vance was ready to provide some.
REPORTER: I wanted to ask you about the latest economic news from this morning, with inflation now being under three percent, the lowest rate since mid-2021. What is your, sort of, reaction to that news?
VANCE: Well, I think the crowd reaction says it all. Look, when they say that inflation is down, they mean from a baseline where groceries are already 30 percent more expensive than they were when Donald Trump was president. And they're not saying it's coming down. They're just saying it's not going up as fast as it was three years ago. That is not a reputation or a record to brag on, that's a record to be ashamed of. Why did it take them so long to get inflation to where it is, and why are prices so high? It's because Kamala Harris failed to do her job.
This is the game that Democrats and their press lackeys want to play. They want to suggest that the Biden-Harris administration deserves praise for "bringing inflation down" from 40-year highs that they caused. If someone sets your house on fire and puts out the flames after a quarter of it has burned to the ground, do you give them a high-five and thank them? No, you ask them why the heck they set your house on fire and call the cops.
In a desperate attempt to avoid a recession (which occurred anyway), Biden and Harris overheated the economy. That was supposed to lead to a "soft landing," a phrase the administration still uses today. But what is soft about overall prices increasing over 20 percent while interest rates climbed so high that the dream of home ownership died for most people? Yeah, the administration avoided some bad headlines by rewriting the definition of recession in 2022 despite two straight quarters of negative growth, but no one should brag about setting American families back years or even decades.
Vance continued by calling out Harris for trying to have it both ways.
VANCE: You know, it's funny. Kamala Harris, on the one hand, will say on day one, we're going to tackle the affordability crisis, and like I said earlier, Kamala Harris has been the vice president for three and a half years, and I think, ladies and gentlemen, she's in effect been the acting president because we all know Joe Biden isn't home. So she's been the one controlling government policy for three and a half years.
She says she wants to tackle the affordability crisis on day one, and then, on the other hand, she'll say, "Oh, we've already got inflation under control." Well, which is it, Kamala? Which is it? The simple truth is American credit card debt is getting higher. Americans are finding the basic necessities in middle-class life less affordable. Americans are becoming, especially young people, are becoming paupers in their own country.
If we don't do better, our young generation, they're not gonna own anything, they're not gonna have anything. They're going to be renters in the country that their parents and grandparents built. Inflation is a disaster. Kamala Harris does not have a leg to stand on.
Kamala Harris is the vice president right now. She doesn't need to wait until "day one" to take on the affordability crisis hitting American families. That is unless the suggestion is that Biden is preventing her from doing what needs to be done. But I've been assured that the current president is the greatest of the modern era, even worthy of Mount Rushmore.
In short, the Harris campaign's messaging is completely incoherent. Either the inflation crisis is over, or there's more work that needs to be done. If it's the latter (and clearly it is), then the last person who should be trusted to do that work is the person who presided over the massive spike in inflation in the first place.
