J.D. Vance’s Most Horrific Debate Answer Was What He Didn’t Say
The Trump-Vance ticket hasn’t ruled out bringing back one of the Trump administration’s most insidious policies.During CBS’s vice presidential debate Tuesday night, J.D. Vance skirted and deflected a direct line of questioning about a highly controversial immigrant processing program that separated children from their families. “Senator Vance, your campaign is pledging to carry out the largest mass deportation plan in American history and to use the U.S. military to do so,” started CBS’s Margaret Brennan. “Could you be more specific about exactly how this will work, for example, would you deport parents who have entered the U.S. illegally and separate them from any of their children who were born on U.S. soil?”But the Republican number two pick wouldn’t answer the question outright. Instead, Vance went on a conspiratorial tangent about the influx of fentanyl (the vast majority of which is actually trafficked in by U.S. citizens), crime, and minimum wage before finally touching on the policy’s victims.“We have 320,000 children that the Department of Homeland Security has effectively lost,” Vance said. “Some of them have been sex trafficked. Some of them hopefully are at home with their families. Some of them have been used as drug trafficking mules.”Vance didn’t cast judgment on the Trump-era program, though. Instead, he opted to deflect the blame of the program onto someone who had absolutely no involvement in its proliferation: Vice President Kamala Harris.“The real family separation policy in this country is unfortunately Kamala Harris’s wide open southern border, and I’d ask my Americans to remember when she came into office, she said she was going to do this,” the vice presidential pick said. “Real leadership would be saying, ‘You know what, I screwed up. We’re going to go back to Donald Trump’s border policies.’ I wish that she would do that. It would be good for all of us.”Trump, meanwhile, has made his stance on the cruel policy perfectly clear. In an interview with Univision in 2023, the former president appeared open to resurrecting the violent blueprint, arguing that his administration’s family separation policy was not only an effective deterrent but actually decreased the number of undocumented immigrants entering the country.“When you hear that you’re going to be separated from your family, you don’t come,” Trump said at the time. “When you think you’re going to come into the United States with your family, you come. And we did for a period of time family separation, and others have, too, by the way.”
The Trump-Vance ticket hasn’t ruled out bringing back one of the Trump administration’s most insidious policies.
During CBS’s vice presidential debate Tuesday night, J.D. Vance skirted and deflected a direct line of questioning about a highly controversial immigrant processing program that separated children from their families.
“Senator Vance, your campaign is pledging to carry out the largest mass deportation plan in American history and to use the U.S. military to do so,” started CBS’s Margaret Brennan. “Could you be more specific about exactly how this will work, for example, would you deport parents who have entered the U.S. illegally and separate them from any of their children who were born on U.S. soil?”
But the Republican number two pick wouldn’t answer the question outright. Instead, Vance went on a conspiratorial tangent about the influx of fentanyl (the vast majority of which is actually trafficked in by U.S. citizens), crime, and minimum wage before finally touching on the policy’s victims.
“We have 320,000 children that the Department of Homeland Security has effectively lost,” Vance said. “Some of them have been sex trafficked. Some of them hopefully are at home with their families. Some of them have been used as drug trafficking mules.”
Vance didn’t cast judgment on the Trump-era program, though. Instead, he opted to deflect the blame of the program onto someone who had absolutely no involvement in its proliferation: Vice President Kamala Harris.
“The real family separation policy in this country is unfortunately Kamala Harris’s wide open southern border, and I’d ask my Americans to remember when she came into office, she said she was going to do this,” the vice presidential pick said. “Real leadership would be saying, ‘You know what, I screwed up. We’re going to go back to Donald Trump’s border policies.’ I wish that she would do that. It would be good for all of us.”
Trump, meanwhile, has made his stance on the cruel policy perfectly clear. In an interview with Univision in 2023, the former president appeared open to resurrecting the violent blueprint, arguing that his administration’s family separation policy was not only an effective deterrent but actually decreased the number of undocumented immigrants entering the country.
“When you hear that you’re going to be separated from your family, you don’t come,” Trump said at the time. “When you think you’re going to come into the United States with your family, you come. And we did for a period of time family separation, and others have, too, by the way.”
