Vance calls Democrats ‘party of crazies’ at Dallas convention
President Donald Trump closed the first-ever Republican midterm convention Thursday night at the American Airlines Center in downtown Dallas by leading supporters in a raised-hand pledge to vote Republican in November’s midterm elections, while Vice President JD Vance preceded him on stage and framed Democrats as “the party of crazies.”
The two-day gathering, which Trump proposed earlier this year to shore up GOP support, drew the president back to the stage on its closing night after a speech the previous evening that lasted nearly two hours. On Thursday, he had attendees raise their right hands and repeat a pledge of personal loyalty after him.
“I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the united states that loves us so much that he can’t even breathe that I will go out with my family, my friends, I’ll do it anyway, I don’t care if I’m registered or not I’m going to try and cheat like hell like they do,” Trump said. “And we’re going to vote on November 3rd or we’re going to vote before that.”
As the final speaker of the evening, Trump repeatedly cast the midterms as a referendum on his own presidency. “You got to do me the biggest favor you’ve ever done me, you’ve got to do this for me, you got to pretend I’m on the ticket,” Trump told the crowd. “I’m on the ticket. I’m on the ticket. He’s on the ticket. Pretend I’m on the ticket because this is going to turn out to be one of the most important elections.”
He warned that if Democrats regain control of Congress, they would undo his administration’s record. “They’ll destroy everything we’ve built,” Trump said. “They’ll ruin our country, so on election day, Nov. 3, you got to do me a favor, you got to get out and vote and you got to pretend I’m on the ballot because, in a way, I am on the ballot.”
Trump has framed the midterms in personal terms as his approval ratings have dropped amid an unpopular war and divisive policy fights. He has warned Republicans that losing the House would lead to his impeachment. For more than a year, he has pushed Republican-led states to undertake unorthodox mid-decade redistricting to create additional GOP-favored House districts and backed election legislation that Democrats and civil rights advocates have said will disenfranchise voters.
The president also doubled down on a pledge he first announced the previous evening: a $5,000 check he calls the “Trump Dividend” that he said would go to every adult American if Republicans maintain control of the House and Senate after the November election. Trump has offered few specifics on how the proposal would be funded or implemented, and it would require congressional approval.
Vance, a presumed candidate to take up the MAGA mantle and be the GOP presidential nominee in 2028, preceded Trump onstage and continued the president’s characterization of Democrats as radicals set to destroy what Vance described as the American way of life. Vance framed Republicans as the party of common sense and the Democrats as “the party of crazies.”
Vance, who presents himself as a Christian family man, championed traditional family structures and the idea of the United States as the “birthright” of every American citizen, arguing that both were under attack by Democrats. He accused Democrats of wanting to “abolish” the nuclear family, referring to a since-deleted 2021 tweet by William Lawrence, the Democratic nominee for Michigan’s 7th District, that read “[expletive] isolation and [expletive] the nuclear family domicile.” Lawrence has since disavowed some of the positions expressed in those deleted posts.
“This fall, the Democrats are running candidates who will tell your children what they are allowed to say, how they are allowed to live and, importantly, who they ought to hate, because that is what the Democratic Party is about in 2026,” Vance said.
Vance then alleged that the Democratic Party was moving further left, referring to the democratic socialists who won their primaries and are on November’s ballots. He said the Democratic Party was “doubling down on the crazy,” and that the “few reasonable Democrats” had lost their primaries to “extremists who openly hate our nation.”
“It’s not about you, it’s about foreign fraudsters and it’s about who they hate and we have to send their [expletive] packing in November,” Vance said. “We got to send a message this November that the country does not belong to the radicals, it does not belong to the bureaucrats, it does not belong to the highest bidder. This country was handed down from our parents and their parents before them. We received this national birthright and we’re going to fight for it by electing Republicans this November.”
Vance did not explicitly refer to the war in Iran, but appeared to allude to it when he acknowledged that some supporters did not agree with all Republican policies. “Do not throw the baby out with the bathwater,” Vance said. “Don’t give the country over to a bunch of crazy people you happen to disagree with us on a policy issue here or there.”
“I’m not asking anybody to agree on every single policy of the administration,” Vance continued. “What I’m asking you to do is to recognize the contrast with the radicals and recognize the achievements of that last 18 months. We have done a lot, my friends, and we can do a lot more if we fight together.”