Sen. JD Vance said the right to free speech and thought is the biggest issue at stake this election, as the GOP vice presidential nominee blasted Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party for “silencing people who disagree with them” in a wide-ranging and candid sit-down with podcast king Joe Rogan.
The pair also dissected the Democratic presidential nominee’s mind-boggling “word salads” and how President Biden is actually helping former President Donald Trump during the three-hour thought-provoking chat just days before the polls officially open.
Vance, 40, argued that the “biggest difference” between Trump, 78, and Harris, 60, is censorship.
“We’re not trying to censor our fellow Americans,” the Ohio senator explained during the freewheeling exchange on “The Joe Rogan Experience” released Thursday.
“We’ll attack Kamala on her policies or her ideas, but we’re not trying to say, ‘You should be silenced because you disagree with us,” he continued.
“That is anathema to everything that I believe in — and that is what’s happened in the modern Democratic Party, at least at the leadership level, is they’ve gotten really comfortable with the idea of silencing people who disagree with them.”
Vance’s strong rebuke of censorship comes as Harris has sought to convey a message of “joy” and unity throughout her campaign — while casting her opponent as a threat to democracy.
The pre-election rallying call struck a chord with the mega-podcaster, whose show has some 15 million followers on Spotify.
Rogan, 57, who is a staunch proponent of free speech, drew particular attention to Democratic vice presidential hopeful Tim Walz’s suggestion over the summer that there’s “no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech” — explaining that he “was very upset” with that.
Vance called Walz’s remark “totally nuts” and contended that that “hate speech” is often “in the eye of the beholder.”
The Ohio junior senator also ridiculed Harris over her way with words.
“I give a lot of speeches, so there’s actually a skill to this. I think she is the Michael Jordan of using as many words as possible to say as little as possible,” Vance said.
“There’s actually a certain gift that she has,” he quipped.
“You’re 500 words into it and you’re like, ‘What the hell did she just say?’ She didn’t say anything.”
Rogan, who has tried to negotiate with Harris for an interview, busted out laughing and imitated Harris jumbling her message.
“Do you think she wears an earpiece?” Rogan asked, prompting Vance to reply, “I wouldn’t be surprised.”
Later on in the interview, Vance ripped into President Biden’s recent suggestion that Trump supporters are “garbage” — a potentially campaign-altering comment that the White House has scrambled to clean up.
The GOP veep hopeful suggested that Biden — who has largely been sidelined from helping Harris’ campaign — “is trying to help Donald Trump.”
“We’re gonna win, but after we win, I’m going to be convinced that Joe Biden was trying to help us the whole time,” he said of the 81-year-old commander-in-chief, noting that Biden also “put on the MAGA hat” during a stop at a Shanksville, Pa., fire station in September.
The Ohio senator also decried the gaping lack of media coverage Biden received after insulting half the country — a moment that drew quick comparisons to Hillary Clinton’s election-ending remark when she described Trump’s supporters as a “basket of deplorable.”
“The number of mentions on CNN about [Tony Hinchcliffe’s Puerto Rico] joke in the last 48 hours: 143, Vance said.
“On MSNBC: 101, on ABC: 53, on NBC: 32, and on CBS: 31,” he went on.
“Do you think that the word ‘garbage’ is going to appear on CNN 141 times over the next few days, I would bet no,” he added.
“Now what’s the difference? Well, one difference is it’s a comedian telling a joke, and it’s the president of the United States telling what he actually thinks.”
During a more serious moment, Vance insisted that allegations of second gentleman Doug Emhoff slapping a former flame should be heavily investigated.
“If you are a domestic abuser, that usually doesn’t stop with one person,” the pol said.
“Is it in the public interest to do some investigation about whether the president could be sharing the White House with a person who was engaged in domestic abuse?” he asked rhetorically.
Both rivaling presidential campaigns have sought to claim the mantel of freedom in the high-stakes 2024 cycle — with Harris and Walz honing in on abortion and safeguarding democracy while Trump and Vance have focused on censorship.
Earlier this week, Harris, who once called for Trump’s Twitter account to be suspended, tried to turn the tables on her rival — hearking back to his 2022 call to terminate parts of the Constitution.
“When he says he wants to terminate the Constitution of the United States? You know what that would mean?” she said in an interview with the Club Shay Shay podcast. “The First Amendment, the Second Amendment.”
Trump and Vance, meanwhile, have groused about the Biden-Harris administration’s efforts to combat social media posts on COVID-19 it deemed “misinformation” and Big Tech’s suppression of other content such as The Post’s bombshell Hunter Biden laptop story.
“Joe Biden fundamentally traded his political influence for money,” Vance stressed. “That was the true scandal of the Hunter Biden laptop. Again, it wasn’t Hunter Biden doing cocaine with a stripper.”
The Post recently broke revelations from a House subcommittee on government weaponization showing evidence that Facebook executives made their decision to throttle the bombshell laptop story based, in part, on an assumption that there would likely be an incoming Biden-Harris administration.
But despite the GOP’s longstanding feud with the scandal-scarred first son, Vance mused that he would actually like to “hang out” with him.
“I want to go hang out with Hunter,” Vance confessed. “I may be the only Republican. That dude, that dude knows how to have a good time.
“I would bet $100 that Hunter Biden is voting for Donald Trump for president,” he joked.
Vance also mused that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg — who has reportedly grown steadfastly keen on staying out of politics as much as possible — is now secretly backing Trump.
“My secret theory is that Zuck is now a secret Trump supporter, but he can’t say that publicly,” Vance insisted.
Over the summer, Zuckerberg called Trump’s response to the July 13 Butler, Pa. assassination attempt “bada–” and the former president claims they have spoken on the phone somewhat recently.
Vance revealed to Rogan that at one point, Trump dangled the possibility of unveiling him as the veep at the Butler, Pa. rally. Ultimately, Trump dropped that idea, but Vance recounted the moment he learned of the assassination attempt.
“I actually thought they had killed him because when you first see the video, he grabs his ear and he goes down, and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, they just killed him,’” Vance recounted to Rogan about his initial reaction.
“I was so pissed,” he added, noting how he thought he should “grab my kids up, throw them in the car, go home and load all my guns, and basically stand like a sentry at our front door.”
The Ohio senator chalked up Trump’s survival to a “genuine miracle.”
Trump made his debut on Rogan’s podcast last week in a hotly-anticipated interview that has garnered over 41 million views on YouTube and quickly become one of his top episodes.
Rogan revealed that he was in talks with the Harris-Walz campaign for a sit-down with the vice president that fell apart because he declined to accommodate their requests that it be conducted remotely and only span about an hour, far less than what is typical for his podcast.
