Vance channels 'Hillbilly Elegy' with RNC speech, giving voice to small town America

Ohio GOP Sen. JD Vance on Wednesday recalled his childhood and the downturn of small town America as he grew up, pointing the finger at President Joe Biden and other career politicians in Washington.

Speaking at the Republican National Convention, the Hillbilly Elegy author spoke to the fading prospects for pursuing the American Dream and insisted that former President Donald Trump would give voice to American workers whom he said Washington had neglected.

"President Trump represents America's last best hope to restore what if lost may never be found again, a country where a working class boy born far from the halls of power can stand on this stage as the next Vice President of The United States of America," he said. 

Vance first rose to prominence with his memoir, which highlighted the socioeconomic struggles of the Appalachian region. The Ohio Republican went on to highlight the importance of speaking for the everyday American.

"But my fellow Americans here in this stage and watching at home this moment is not about me. It's about all of us, and it's about who we're fighting for," he said.

"It's about the auto worker in Michigan wondering why out of touch politicians are destroying their jobs. It's about the factory worker in Wisconsin who makes things with their hands and is proud of American craftsmanship," Vance continued. "It's about the energy worker in Pennsylvania and Ohio who doesn't understand why Joe Biden is willing to buy energy from tin pot dictators across the world when he could buy it from his own citizens, right here in our own country."

"I grew up in Middletown, Ohio, a small town where people spoke their minds, built with their hands and loved their God, their family, their community and their country with their whole hearts," he said. "But it was also a place that had been cast aside and forgotten by America's ruling class in Washington when I was in the fourth grade, a career politician by the name of Joe Biden supported NAFTA, a bad trade deal that sent countless good jobs to Mexico."

"When I was a sophomore in high school, that same career politician named Joe Biden gave China a sweetheart trade deal that destroyed even more good American middle class manufacturing jobs," he went on. "When I was a senior in high school, that same Joe Biden supported the disastrous invasion of Iraq and at each step of the way in small towns like mine in Ohio or next door in Pennsylvania or Michigan and states all across our country, jobs were sent overseas, and our children were sent to war."

"Now, thanks to these policies that Biden and other out of touch politicians in Washington gave us, our country was flooded with cheap Chinese goods, with cheap foreign labor, and in the decades to come, deadly Chinese fentanyl," he went on. "Joe Biden screwed up, and my community paid the price."

He went on to point to Trump's own record, merits, and desire to aid communities like his own.

"Now, my work taught me that there is still so much talent and grit in the American heartland. There really is. But for these places to thrive, my friends, we need a leader who fights for the people who built this country," he said.

"We need a leader who's not in the pocket of big business, but answers to the working man union and nonunion alike, a leader who won't sell out to multinational corporations, but will stand up for American companies and American industry, a leader who rejects Joe Biden and Kamala Harris's green new scam and fights to bring back our great American factories we need PRESIDENT DONALD J TRUMP," he asserted.

"I'm overwhelmed with gratitude to say I officially accept your nomination to be Vice President of the United States of America," he also said.