Exclusive — J.D. Vance: Tim Ryan Pretends to Be ‘Blue-Collar Democrat,’ but He ‘Joined the Far Left’

J.D. Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis and Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate seat for Ohio, said on Tuesday’s edition of the Breitbart News Daily podcast with host Alex Marlow that Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) is fraudulently marketed as a “blue-collar Democrat” despite having joined the “far left” of the Democrat Party.

Vance remarked on news media attempts to benefit Ryan’s political campaign by framing the Democrat as a “blue-collar Democrat.”

“They’re definitely trying to will this guy into being something that he’s not,” Vance said of media’s partisan and political support for Ryan, marketed as news. “If you think of his history, he was elected Congressman from Youngstown. … He was pro-life. He was pro-gun. That all stopped about 10, 12 years ago, when he decided he had national ambitions.”

Vance continued, “He became very socially progressive on all the social issues, and in his last couple of years has really gone off the rails — has proposed banning gas-powered cars, has proposed Medicare for all, has proposed debt-free or cost-free tuition. So, on issue after issue, he’s really joined the far left of the party.”

“You see it in his voting record,” he added, “[voting] a hundred percent of the time with Nancy Pelosi, but the New York Times and the corporate media are desperate to brand this guy as some sort of blue-collar Democrat because they know it will help him electorally in the state of Ohio.”

He continued, “People really aren’t buying it. … He’s strongest with the classical highly educated woke liberal demographic. He’s not really making waves with the working class. In fact, we’re probably going to win his old congressional district in the Mahoning Valley this year.”

Vance emphasized Ryan’s opposition to border security and advocacy for amnesty as an example of his Democrat opponent’s support for policies hurting “working-class” Americans.

“The border is one of the main ways that the globalist elite in this country steal working class wages,” Vance stated. “If you can’t get an American worker to do something at a given wage, why not import an underclass of foreign servants?”

He went on, “[Tim Ryan] has voted for every amnesty package, for every visa-expanding package, and he’s voted against border wall funding multiple times.”

Vance recalled Ryan’s use of racial demagoguery in their recent debate, including left-wing derision of Americans as “racist” for desiring border security. He advised Republicans not to fear such bad faith accusations.

“This is the attack that the far left uses to dispossess normal Americans of any say in their political process,” he said. “The reason why we have a wide-open southern border is because the media has gotten in people’s minds that it’s somehow racist to defend your own border. That’s why we’re constantly on the defensive on it. That’s why so many Republican politicians cave in the face of that media pressure. The fact that Tim Ryan is using that line suggests just how much of a fraud that he is.”

Follow Robert Kraychik on Twitter @rkraychik.