DALLAS — Vice President JD Vance on Thursday reignited his spat with Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and disparaged the Democratic Party’s distancing from “birthright” American values in a Thursday address at the GOP midterm convention.
And in a surprise moment, Vance erupted at a heckler who burst into the arena with a Mexican flag, telling the protester to go south of the border if he hated it up here so much.
Vance talked about the latest addition to his own family with the birth of a new son and how the Trump administration in its first 19 months has sought to make the future more affordable, safer from violent crime and committed to “common sense” governance.
“To the radicals who wish to abolish my family and the thousands and millions of other families all across our country, we have a simple message for them: Stay the hell away from our kids,” the vice president said at the novel midterm event in Dallas.
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Moments later, a protester waving a “Mexican” flag tried to shout down the vice president, causing him to quip: “Well, my friend, if you love Mexico so much, get your ass over there. I’ll buy you the plane ticket.”
Republicans at the American Airlines Center erupted in cheers. Videos showed the protester was also escorted out of the arena.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I had a whole speech written, but I think I got to change it because we just discovered the symbol of the far left,” Vance added, dismissing the disruption as “an idiot waving … a Mexican flag at a protest when he should be waving the flag of the United States of America.”
“Let’s send these lunatics packing and govern our country for the future,” he added later.
Vance also took aim at El-Sayed as the latest example of what is wrong with the Democratic Party, while taking issue with the candidate’s comments last month about his own wife.
“He asked, mockingly, whether I’d bring Usha with me ‘back in time to meet Papaw,’” Vance recounted, according to prepared remarks. “That is what he thinks of my grandfather — a man I loved, and who loved his family unconditionally.
“Abdul looks at him, sees the color of his skin, and decides that he could never have loved my wife.”
The vice president noted that the Senate Democratic hopeful was raised “by his own white step-grandparents” and “knows exactly what that kind of bond looks like” — but attacked his family regardless.
“And he chose, anyway, to say that a man like my grandfather couldn’t have loved from the bottom of his heart someone who looks like Usha,” Vance continued.
“This is who the Democrats are now. They aren’t the party of higher taxes and a little more regulation. They aren’t the party of FDR, or JFK, or even Bill Clinton. No—the Democrats are the party of hatred,” he said.
“The party that despises America, and the people who built it. The party that can find sympathy for the terrorists who perpetrated 9/11, but says people with names like James Vance are incapable of loving people with names like Usha.”
In an August trip to Detroit, Vance had told El-Sayed to “keep my wife’s name the hell out of your mouth” after the Michigan Democrat suggested his late grandfather might have disapproved of his marriage to second lady Usha Vance, an Indian-American Hindu.
While he defended the Trump administration’s record on border security, tax cuts and traditional values, Vance at one point engaged critics on the issue of the Iran war — using the late conservative icon Charlie Kirk’s hatred of conflict to do so.
“I think Charlie is a great example of how to disagree, but still participate in the work of saving this country,” the vice president said. “He did not always agree with us. Let me just give you one example: Charlie hated war.
“Of course, there are people who love what we’ve done, people who don’t. I’m not here to litigate the disagreements,” Vance added. “But what I’m asking you to do is do what Charlie did. Do not throw the baby out with your bathwater.”
“Don’t give the country over to a bunch of crazy people because you happen to disagree with us on a policy issue here,” he said.
Vance, 42, made his pitch to prospective voters less than two years before he’s expected to compete for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination.
