Vance Blasts “Made Up” Racist Quote—but Then Defends It
Vice President JD Vance offered up a defense for his own racism so baffling that it makes you wonder: What in the world are they teaching at Yale Law School?
Vance slammed an X account for paraphrasing one of his anti-immigrant tirades as “completely dishonest”—before confirming that he pretty much agreed with the sentiment anyway.
During an October interview with conservative podcaster Miranda Devine, Vance made a series of comments claiming Americans struggled living next door to immigrants.
“‘Well, wait a second. What is going on here? I don’t know these people. They don’t speak the same language that I do.’ And because there are 20 in the house next door, it’s a little bit rowdier than it was when there was just a family of four or a family of five,” Vance said on the podcast.
“It is totally reasonable and acceptable for American citizens to look at their next-door neighbors and say, ‘I wanna live next to people who I have something in common with. I don’t want to live next to four families of strangers,’” Vance said.
Vance’s comments were old-school racist, as he proselytized about the invented struggles of not living in a homogeneous community made up of white, English-speaking, nuclear families. The inclusion of immigrant families meant noise and chaos for their well-meaning white neighbors. Vance, who has previously admitted to telling racist lies for attention, uses comments like these to justify the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and deportation efforts.
On X, hedge fund manager and frequent anti-Trump poster Spencer Hakimian offered a summation of Vance’s comments: “It’s totally reasonable to not want neighbors who speak another language.”
Vance hit back in a post of his own. “First of all, it’s just a made up quote. Completely dishonest,” he wrote, referring to Hakimian.
“Second, what’s reasonable is to want to share a language with your neighbor. How do you borrow a cup of sugar? Resolve disagreements? Have a nice conversation? You need a common language, and in America, that language is English,” Vance wrote. “The far left became so deranged on immigration that they’re attacking people for wanting to be able to speak to their neighbors.”
In one fell swoop, Vance denied thinking it was reasonable to not want neighbors who don’t speak English, before clarifying that it was not unreasonable to want your neighbors to speak English. If your defense of racism is to offer up a brainteaser, you may be working too hard.