Democrat presidential nominee Kamala Harris is to blame for a string of crimes linked to immigrants, as well as the border crossings that surged during President Joe Biden's time in office. GOP vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance claimed while speaking in Michigan Wednesday.
"I can't believe that anyone would actually think that you should open up the American southern border to all of these criminals, you should let them commit crimes in our communities and then you should refuse to deport them afterward and that's exactly what Kamala Harris has done," Vance said in a speech outside the Shelby Township Police Department, reports Bridge Michigan.
The Ohio Republican also blamed the deaths of three Michigan police officers who were killed this summer while on duty on Harris' rhetoric.
"Kamala Harris has sent out this message that it's open season on American police officers," Vance said.
Vance also on Wednesday laid into Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic Party's vice presidential nominee, both on his claims concerning his military service and for his response to unrest following the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis in 2020.
"When the police are not empowered to do their job, it is the most vulnerable people in our communities who suffer," Vance said. "We saw that force in 2020 with the summer riots."
He added that Walz was "promoting rioters and looters" as they were "burning down the city of Minneapolis," while Harris was "helping to bail the rioters and looters out of jail.”
Harris in 2020 called for donations for a bail fund that was used to get rioters in Minneapolis out of jail, but public reports indicated that only some of the money that was raised ended up being used for that reason.
Walz, meanwhile, came under fire in 2020 after he delayed in calling in the National Guard. Protests started in Minneapolis on May 26, 2020, but he did not call the Guard until four days later.
Vance further on Wednesday blamed Harris for costs skyrocketing for housing and groceries and said his main priority is to make necessities like groceries, gas, and rent more affordable.
"The way you do that is really unleashing American energy, unleashing American farmers, and not spending like a drunken sailor which is what Kamala Harris has done during her time in office," he said.
Vance also accused Walz of lying about his military service and claimed that his rival nominee "dropped out" of his Army Reserves unit before it went to Iraq.
"As a Marine who served his country in uniform, when the United States Marine Corps, when the United States of America asked me to go to Iraq to serve my country, I did it," Vance told reporters at a campaign rally in Detroit. "I did what they asked me to do, and I did it honorably.
"When Tim Walz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, you know what he did? He dropped out of the Army and allowed his unit to go without him, a fact that he's been criticized for aggressively by a lot of the people that he served with."
He also called it "shameful" to prepare a unit to go to Iraq but then "drop out right before you actually have to go."
Vance's remarks come in connection with criticism Walz got in 2018 when he first ran for governor. Newsweek reports that at that time, two retired senior officials with the Minnesota National Guard wrote an open letter that criticized Walz for retiring from the military just before his battalion was to head into an active-duty deployment for Iraq.
They said he left the "1-125th Field Battalion and its soldiers hanging."
Vance slammed Walz for saying that weapons shouldn't be allowed on America's streets that he "used in war."
"Well, I wonder, Tim Walz, when were you ever in war?" said Vance. "When was this? What was this weapon that you carried into war, given that you abandoned your unit right before they went to Iraq, and he has not spent a day in a combat zone? What bothers me about Tim Walz is the stolen valor garbage."
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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