J.D. Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis and Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate seat from Ohio, told SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Saturday that the basic desire to live in a community safely and securely, while being able to provide for your family, is under assault by corporate and political leadership.
“The basic desire to live in a community in safety and security, to be able to provide for your family, these things are all under assault,” Vance said. “I really believe a combination of corporate leadership — [they] decided they can plunder this country, get rich off of it, even if they ship its wealth off to China — and by political leadership that has no willpower or no desire to push back.”
While he is running for the Senate and has never run for office before, Vance explained that the “craziest thing” to him is that members will complain about their $175,000 salary but will end up spending years of their life in D.C. and end up worth millions of dollars. “You know, not like, like, absolutely everybody has complained about making $175,000 a year. But then people spend 30 years in Washington making $175,000 a year, and they’re worth $50 million afterwards.”
“Like how does that math work out? Right? It’s because our political leadership has realized that it can get wealthy by conspiring with our enemies instead of actually dealing with the very long-term problems that we have,” Vance continued. “I really think this is what’s going on… It’s an alliance between corrupt politicians and bureaucrats, and corrupt multinational corporations, that has made the most powerful nation on, in the world on the verge of collapse.”
While Vance talked about the country’s “incredible history,” he said, “one of the things that I hate about the left, they are constantly making us feel ashamed of our great history.” Vance referred to World War II, when “a bunch of 18 and 19-year-old American boys [came] and liberated a continent from fascism and Nazism.” He added that the country’s “legacy” is the “heritage” of the country, such as being the first country to put a man on the moon and having technological achievements and miracles of modern medicine.
Regarding the “greatness” that exists in the country, Vance said, “There are still folks taking care of their kids, going to work, building great things, doing great things.” Still, he explained, the country needs to “build a leadership class” that will be “respectful of the incredible population that we still have in this country.”
Vance emphasized that he still has hope for the United States, which is why he is running for Senate.
“What’s so cool about this country is the people are great,” Vance added. “What is terrible about this country right now is that our leaders are a total disaster. And if we can get even, even Okay people leading this country, calling the shots [in] our government again, I think we’re going to unleash an incredible century of American Greatness.”
Breitbart News Saturday airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Eastern.
Jacob Bliss is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter.
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