The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
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Vance says he would have requested alternative elector slates on Jan 6
“I would have asked the states to submit alternative slates of electors and let the country have the debate about what actually matters and what kind of an election that we have in these important states.”
Vance: Media fabricated claim that Trump called white supremacists fine people
“Donald Trump never called white supremacists very fine people after Charlottesville, a total fabrication of the American media”
Vance predicts US will see net negative immigration in 2025
“I think in 2025, we will have the first net negative immigration number in about 50 or 60 years in the United States”
Vance: Trump administration will not offer legal amnesty to undocumented immigrants
“What the president has said is, number one, we're not going to do amnesty in this country.”
Vance: Growing the U.S. economy via cheap imported labor is a dead end
“When we try to grow our economy, frankly, through importing cheap labor, that I think is a dead end.”
Vance: The US university system is broken for enforcing conventional thinking
“If you as a college are actually promoting social, conventional thinking, then you're not serving your fundamental purpose, and I think the entire university system in this country is broken because of that fact.”
Vance: GOP establishment opposes Trump over foreign policy, not January 6
“Fundamentally the reason the old guard of the Republican Party hates Donald Trump, it's not because of January the sixth, twenty-twenty-one, whatever your views on it, it's because Donald Trump doesn't think that we should start stupid wars in foreign countrie…”
Vance: US could cut defense budget if procurement is made more efficient
“I actually do think you could cut the American defense budget and make our country stronger, but you would have to make the procurement process much more efficient.”
Vance: Joint Chiefs disobeyed Trump on Syria troop redeployments
“The Joint Chiefs of Staff Didn't obey the president of the United States on troop redeployments in Syria, which actually happened during Trump's administration.”
Vance: Biden and Harris opened southern border via executive orders
“One of the ways that, that that Biden and Harris opened up the American Southern border was through executive orders, right? It was an executive order that submitted deportations, an executive order that ended the remain in Mexico policy.”
Vance: Big Tech favors Democrats while Little Tech startups lean Republican
“Big tech has become increasingly pro-Democrat. Little tech has become increasingly pro-Republican, right? So if you're an upstart, if you're in crypto, if you're like a small AI company, I think you're much more likely to be pro-Republican. If you're a monopol…”
Vance: Lina Khan is right that Big Tech is an oligarchic threat
“What Lena Kahn fundamentally gets correct is that big tech really is a threat. It's a threat to free speech, it's increasingly oligarchic, it controls too much of what we're allowed to say, and also, It controls a lot of the ways in which capital gets invested…”
Vance claims there are 25 million illegal immigrants in the US
“Because you have twenty-five million illegal aliens in this country, and you like, you can't fix what I would call the minor or sort of less important immigration question until you fix the real problem.”
Vance worries about military-age Iranian males entering via southern border
“Given what's going on in the Middle East, I do worry about military-age males from Iran coming into this country through the southern border.”
Vance: Claiming the iPhone is designed in Cupertino is increasingly untrue
“That the idea that the iPhone is designed in Cupertino is increasingly no longer even true, right? It's something that we lie to ourselves about because the people who are doing all the manufacturing of the hardware of the iPhone are getting much better at des…”
Vance: China is the only foreign tech industry competing with US AI
“When you look at their technology industry, I think that's the only tech industry, especially when it comes to things like AI, where they're even sort of knocking on the door of America.”
Vance: Foreign leader proposed non-European NATO alternative using US tech stack
“A foreign leader came to me relatively recently, this is actually last week small country, but very important country strategically, very good ally of the United States, and basically pitched me On creating a NATO alternative outside of Europe, but where count…”
JD Vance: US employment rate for college-educated STEM graduates is declining
“The college-educated employment rate for STEM graduates in this country seems to be declining.”
Vance: Low GDP growth drives political dysfunction in the US
“When the economy is growing four, five, six percent a year, then Democrats can kind of get what they want, Republicans can kind of get what they want, and it all makes sense. If the economy is growing between zero and one percent a year, then I think it makes …”
Vance: Worker wage growth outpaced corporate profits and government under Trump
“For pretty much my entire life, the wages of workers were stagnant, corporate profits were going up, and the size of government was going up. And there was a four-year period where the wages of workers outpaced the size of government and corporate profits. It'…”
Vance: Wealth distribution flipped from 80% Republican to 70% Democratic counties
“You go back even 30 years ago, and approximately 80% of the counties That represented, sorry, 80% of the wealth in American counties went in places that voted Republican, and about 20% of the wealth went to places that voted Democrat. Now it's 70% of the wealt…”
Vance: Wall Street shifted from 3-to-1 Republican to 9-to-1 Democrat
“I believe that in 2012, Wall Street, which I think Wall Street fundamentally has been the main beneficiary of globalization, of a lot of the policies that I pushed back against and criticized over the last 30 years, Wall Street went three to one for Romney ove…”
Vance: Lina Khan's broad anti-M&A stance hurts small tech and venture capital
“Where I think Lena Kahn goes wrong is that you're exactly right. Like, you need the singles and doubles. You need sometimes a medium-sized company to buy a smaller company for three hundred million dollars, right? That liquidates founders. That gives the ventu…”
Vance: Massively reducing regulation could add 1.5 to 3 points to US GDP growth
“I don't know that it's, I don't know how easy it is to get another 300 bips of growth, but I think you could get a lot more growth, whether it's 300 or one 50, just by massively reducing the amount of regulatory burden in the real economy.”
Vance: US labor productivity is flatlining, challenging AI job-loss fears
“If the robots were coming to take all of our jobs, you would see labor productivity skyrocketing in this country, but you actually see labor productivity flatlining.”
Vance: Economic stagnation is concentrated in heavily regulated sectors
“If you look at where the economy has been most stagnant, it's been in basically the heavily regulated parts of the economy.”
Vance: US innovation is concentrated in software while regulated sectors stagnate
“If you look at the real innovation of the American economy, it's been in the world of software. If you look at where the economy has been most stagnant, it's been in basically the heavily regulated parts of the economy”
Vance: Introduced Senate legislation to tax remittances sent abroad
“I've got a piece of legislation in the United States Senate that we've got a lot of colleagues who have signed up for it, which would tax remittances, right?”
Vance: U.S.-China trade leaves China a strong producer and U.S. a weaker consumer
“Right now the relationship is fundamentally that the Chinese have figured out they can create a massively powerful producerist society while America becomes a weaker, weaker consumerist society.”
Vance: The US has massively over-regulated energy, transportation, and home construction
“We have massively over-regulated the real world, right? Over-regulated transportation, over-regulated energy, over-regulated home construction.”
Vance: Zillow data shows US housing costs rose 0.8% over past year
“I think according to Zillow, over the past 12 months, housing costs have gone up .8%.”
Vance: AI will drive a food revolution yielding more food on less land
“I think it's going to lead to a new food revolution where we can grow a lot more food. On a lot less land.”