Vance calls on battleground state Republicans to ‘nationalize’ the midterms

DALLAS — Vice President JD Vance urged Republicans from several battleground states Thursday to “nationalize” their midterm elections this fall.

“We have two things that we’ve got to do in order to win these midterm elections,” Vance said during remarks at a private breakfast here with GOP leaders and activists from Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, according to audio obtained by NBC News from a person who was in the room.

“Number one, we have to remind the American people of all the good things that we’re doing,” he said, “and number two, we have to remind the American people of how effing crazy the Democrats have become over the past couple of years.”

Vance, who is viewed as a likely candidate to succeed term-limited President Donald Trump in 2028, added: “We’ve got to nationalize this election. We’ve got to talk about all the crazy things the Democrats are doing.”

The remarks, which were closed to the media, came ahead of Vance’s Thursday night speech at the Republicans’ midterm convention.

Vance — who was greeted with chants of “JD! JD! JD!” — told the audience of the early morning wakeup call he had received from Trump after only a few hours of sleep. Trump had addressed the convention for an hour and 45 minutes the night before.

“So I get a call at like 6 a.m.: ‘JD, are you awake?’ Yeah, I’m always awake after four hours of sleep on a Thursday or a Wednesday night or whatever the hell day it is,” Vance quipped.

Trump, Vance added, was “pounding the pavement. He’s talking about the elections. He’s talking about the speech. He’s talking about, What do we do next? How do we get everybody across the finish line? … That energy is exactly what we need from every single person in this room.”

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In his comments about Democrats, Vance singled out Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Michigan. Vance has been particularly critical of El-Sayed, having traveled last week to Michigan to make an explicit case against him. On Thursday morning, with Michigan delegates in the room, he called El-Sayed a “nut job.”

“I think Abdul El-Sayed may very well be the person who wins Republicans the midterms in November because he’s such a crazy person,” Vance said.

Vance spoke for about 12 minutes.

“I’m not going to tell you how to run your races because you guys are all out there and you see the local environment much better than I possibly could as vice president,” he said as he wrapped up his comments. “What I want to tell you is just keep fighting.”

He closed with a parting shot at Democrats.

“I want a Democratic Party that is more reasonable and more rational,” Vance said. “I would love to have a policy debate with Democrats about taxes and spending, rather than whether we’re going to open up the southern border and allow our country to become roughshod by Mexican drug cartels. But in order to do that, the Democrats have got to get back to common sense. And the only way to get the Democrats back to common sense is to kick their ass in November.”