Sen. J.D. Vance, one of several Republican politicians reportedly on former President Donald Trump's list of potential running mates, said Sunday that the main goal is getting him elected president, and at this point, he's "happy to be an advocate" in the Senate for his agenda.
"I think that's the best way for me to help the people of Ohio," the Ohio Republican said in an interview on CBS News' "Face the Nation." "I'll let him make that decision, ultimately. I think he knows how to best run his presidential campaign … I actually don't care that much who the vice president is because Trump's ultimately going to govern."
In the end, though, Trump must defeat President Joe Biden, Vance insisted.
"The contrast is so extraordinary between higher inflation at home and war overseas," said Vance. "That's the Biden record. The Trump record of peace at home and prosperity, is an incredible thing to run on, and importantly, it's an incredible thing to deliver for our country. So I think we need to help Donald Trump get across the finish line."
Vance appeared with several other potential vice-presidential candidates in New York to support Trump during his trial last week and said that is part of spending a "fair amount of time with him" in recent weeks, including helping him raise resources.
Meanwhile, Vance accused Biden's call for tariffs on Chinese items of being an endorsement of Trump's tariffs, which he ran against in 2020.
"Now that he sees that Donald Trump is leading him in polls, he's adopting the Donald Trump agenda," said Vance. "That's not actually being a good policy president. That's shifting on politics because you know you're about to lose."
He also accused Biden of protecting green energy jobs at the expense of the nation's industrial heartland.
"If you are in Wisconsin, Michigan, or Pennsylvania, you are not being empowered or enriched by Joe Biden's green energy agenda," he said. "So him applying tariffs on the green agenda stuff, does it help steelmakers? Does it help natural gas workers? Does it help the heart of the American economy? The answer is no, which is another reason why Donald Trump would make a much better president."
Meanwhile, the nation must double down on bringing back good jobs to the heartland, said Vance, adding that he agrees with applying broad-based tariffs on goods from China, not only on green-friendly items like solar panels and items for electric vehicles.
"We need to protect American industries from all of the competition," Vance said. "The reason China beats us, it's not because they have better workers, it's because they're willing to use slaves."
Vance also spoke out about American universities and defended a stance he made earlier this year about approving of some of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's stands of enacting government control over universities.
"What you're seeing in the United States is that universities are controlled by left-wing foundations," Vance said. "They're not controlled by the American taxpayers, and yet the American taxpayer is sending hundreds of billions of dollars to these universities every single year."
Taxpayers, he added, should have a say in how their money is spent in the nation's universities.
"If they're not educating our children well, and they're layering the next generation down in mountains of student debt, then they're not meeting their end of the bargain," said Vance. "I think it's totally reasonable to say there needs to be a political solution to that problem."
He stressed that he does not endorse everything Orban does, but he thinks his stance on taxpayer influence on universities is a "reasonable thing."
"I do think that he's made some smart decisions there that we could learn from in the United States," said Vance.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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