'We need fighters who are actually going to fight:' J.D. Vance campaigns for Senate in Mansfield

MANSFIELD - U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance said on Tuesday that his first order of business if elected would be to fight for legislation that would double the number of agents stationed at the U.S.-Mexico border and finish building a border wall.

The former Marine and Iraq War veteran told Republicans at a local sports bar that the situation at the southern border has gotten so out of hand that the Marine Corps should be sent there. 

"The drug cartels that are there are some of the most vicious people in the world," Vance said. "We're the greatest country in the world and we're letting a bunch of criminal gangs use our southern border as their criminal base of operations? This is ridiculous."

J.D. Vance: Biden, 'unholy alliance' coming for our guns, other 'cherished American liberties' next

The last time active-duty troops were deployed to the border was in 2019 after then-President Donald Trump declared a national emergency, which was canceled by President Joe Biden. 

Candidate is the author of 'Hillbilly Elegy'

About 3,500 members of the National Guard are stationed at the border, according to Military Times. Their mission is scheduled to end Sept. 30 but could be extended. 

Vance, who joined the race to succeed retiring Sen. Rob Portman earlier this month, is perhaps best known for his memoir, "Hillbilly Elegy," which chronicled his upbringing in Middletown. It's been made into a movie that stars Glenn Close and Amy Adams. 

Vance, 36, faces a number of candidates in the GOP primary, including Josh Mandel, a former state treasurer, and Jane Timken, a former chair of the Ohio Republican Party, both of whom visited Mansfield in recent months. Vance flirted with a run for U.S. Senate in 2018 but ultimately decided against challenging Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown.

In addition to the border, Vance used his time at MVP Sports Bar and Grille to rail against major technology companies, saying they should be broken up and taxed. And he argued that America has become too reliant on on countries such as China for critical goods and services, citing car parts and pharmaceutical ingredients.

Punish those who are destroying America

"We need fighters who are actually going to fight for rebuilding this country, to punish the companies and elites who are destroying it and that forces our country to have a reckoning around what's going on and how to fix the real problems that exist in this country," Vance said. "I don't think anybody else is doing and that's why I decided to throw my hat in the ring."

After his time in the military, Vance attended The Ohio State University and Yale Law School. He then moved to San Francisco and worked for the billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel, who has donated $10 million to a super PAC supporting Vance's Senate bid.

Vance moved to Cincinnati in 2018 and co-founded a venture capital firm that is backed in part by Thiel, whom he described Tuesday as "the one person in Silicon Valley who has pushed back against all the power that Silicon Valley has." 

Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos 'afraid of me'

"It might be a bit of red flag if Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos were writing big checks to my campaign, but they're not," Vance added. "And the reason they're not is because they're afraid of me."

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Thiel was an early supporter of Trump and had a prime-time speech at that year's Republican National Convention. Vance, on the other hand, was critical of Trump, calling his policy proposals "immoral to absurd."

Vance has since embraced the former president and appeared on Fox News earlier this month, expressing regret for his earlier comments.

In a brief interview, Vance told the News Journal that his view of Trump first began to shift about three years ago after overhearing the CEO of a hotel chain say that Trump's immigration policies had forced him to rely less on undocumented workers and pay his other employees a higher wage.

'They really just didn't care that much'

"I think I had a lot of experiences like that where again, I saw the inside of these elite corridors and I realized that they really just didn't care that much about the country that had made them as wealthy and powerful as they were and Trump was fighting back against it," Vance said.

Vance said misperceptions of Trump can be traced to his rhetoric.

"Salena Zito famously said Trump's best supporters, they take him seriously, not literally," Vance said, citing the reporter and columnist. "And I think that a lot of times Trump is joking. When you realize that, you start to ask yourself, 'Well, maybe I should just have a sense of humor about this rather than joining the media freak-out over everything the guy says.'

"Yes, I certainly criticized his rhetoric in 2016 but I think one thing I realized is that a lot of his most outrageous statements are actually him joking."

The USA TODAY Network Ohio Bureau contributed to this report.

mtrombly@gannett.com

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Twitter: @monroetrombly