J. D. Vance hopes to be vice president in a second Trump administration.
In an interview with NBC News on Tuesday, July 30, 2024 (details here), he said he wants a role in solving the border and drug crises.
How does he plan to solve them? On the border, he said “I’d basically do the exact opposite of what Kamala Harris did.” That’s very short of specifics, and he’s probably chasing the squirrel up the wrong tree, given that Republicans are misrepresenting what Harris’s border role was.
Biden didn’t put her in charge of the border, as they claim. CBS News says (here),
“Harris was not asked to … oversee immigration policy and enforcement at the U.S.-Mexico border. … In her immigration role, Harris’ main line of work has focused on convincing companies to invest in Central America and promoting democracy and development there through diplomacy.”
My guess is Vance either hasn’t been briefed on this, or is choosing to ignore it, but I’ll let you figure out what the opposite of this is. You can bet, though, is that a Trump-Vance administration will be far more focused on border walls and deporting migrants than trying to address the root causes of migration (which was Harris’s role) by improving living conditions in migrants’ home countries.
On the drug crisis, Vance said “the federal government has a huge role to play … in solving or at least addressing the substance abuse problem.” Yeah, but that’s like saying water is wet. He sees himself in “just a basic leadership role and remind people that there is hope on the other side of addiction — there is recovery.” Again, no specifics, probably because he has no ideas.
Treatment and recovery efforts have been underway over a century, but we still have addicts. Why does he think he can do better? He continued, “they have to not die … and the best way to solve that problem is to prevent [fentanyl] from coming into our streets in the first place.” Intercepting drugs isn’t a new idea, either. We already spend billions on trying. How does he plan to achieve what no one else has?
There’s really no excuse for this. As the son of an addict (his mother), he knows how hard treating addiction is. He should know — there’s no excuse for him not knowing — how hard it is to stop the flow of illicit drugs across the border. For a primer on the problem, read this article. There’s a huge federal effort, and it’s not badly run, it’s just an overwhelming challenge.
The fact is, Vance’s facile platitudes and vague promises won’t stem the flow of migrants or stop drug smuggling. He doesn’t seem to know how to solve those problems, but he shouldn’t feel bad, because nobody else does either. Some problems are unsolvable, and have to be managed as best you can. Both the migrant flow and drug problem likely fall in that category.
Vance brings no special insights or skills to the table, he’s never run a company or agency, so electing him probably won’t bring the U.S. any closer to solving either of these problems. He’s just blowing campaign smoke. But this is an election season, or rather what some people call “the silly season,” so you gotta expect that.
Photo below: Virtually all drugs entering the U.S. from Mexico come through ports of entry like this one, and to intercept them, you have to open and thoroughly every container, package, and every nook and cranny of vehicle.
