With the midterm elections 11 months away, Vice President JD Vance visited one of the most closely watched swing districts in the country to ask Pennsylvania voters to aim their anger over the economy at Democrats rather than the Trump administration.

During a speech at Uline Shipping Supplies in Alburtis in the Lehigh Valley, Vance blamed immigrants for the housing shortage and invoked the name of notorious killer and cult leader Charles Manson as he doubled down on President Donald Trump’s rhetoric from the week before in the Poconos.

Vance’s visit was to U.S. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie’s district, while Trump’s speech last week at the Mount Airy Casino Resort was in U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan’s district. Both freshman Republicans won their seats by roughly a percentage point last year and are among the most vulnerable incumbents in Congress headed into 2026.

Both speeches were billed as being focused on the economy — as Trump and Vance seek to counter Democrats’ message on affordability ahead of next year’s election. But both delved into an assortment of topics.

Though Vance’s remarks were wide-ranging, the vice president hewed to the White House message that while the price of eggs might still be high, the administration is working to improve pocketbook issues and restore confidence in the economy.

“Even though we’ve made incredible progress, we understand that there’s a lot more work to do, and the thing that I’d ask from the American people is a little bit of patience,” Vance said.

Affordability

Vance didn’t say the affordability crisis is a “Democratic hoax,” as Trump did.

He just said it’s the Democrats’ fault.

“When I hear the Democrats talk about the affordability crisis they created,” Vance said, “it’s a little bit like … Charles Manson criticizing violent crime. Look in the mirror my friend, you are the cause of the problem.”

It’s a variation of Trump’s line from last week that “Democrats talking about affordability is like Bonnie and Clyde preaching about public safety.”

Democrats started criticizing the price of eggs when Trump was in office for less than a week, Vance said.

A woman asked Trump about it, and according to Vance, the president responded, “’Lady, we’ve been here for three days. It takes a little bit of time to fix something that was so fundamentally broken.’”

Every “single affordability crisis” in the United States — food, housing, medicine, gas — is because we “inherited a nightmare of an economy from Joe Biden,” Vance told the crowd.

In an unusual explanation of how Biden sent housing costs soaring, for example, Vance explained, that the previous administration’s immigration policies were to blame.

Vance said “20 million illegal immigrants … took homes that, by all right, go to American citizens, and to the people of this great state.”

It’s a line that he’s used before, which fact-checkers have flagged. Politifact pointed out there are around 12 million to 14 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States. And the housing shortage comes from lack of construction of a sufficient supply of affordable homes, experts say.

Beyond that, Politifact said, immigrants often share housing with friends or relatives, making their average housing consumption “far smaller than is typical.”

Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, who is up for reelection next year, hit back at Vance on social media and made the case that Trump’s policies, including cuts to Medicaid and tariffs, are exacerbating the cost-of-living headaches for Pennsylvanians.

“Donald Trump and JD Vance’s economic policies are hurting Pennsylvania. They have raised prices at the grocery store, screwed over our farmers, and gutted healthcare funding,” Shapiro said on X. “I know this Administration thinks the cost of living is a ‘hoax’ — but it’s not, and Pennsylvania families know it.”

Firing federal workers

In his speech, Vance made much of the just-released November jobs report, delayed by the government shutdown. Around 64,000 jobs were added to the economy, an improvement over the more than 100,000 jobs lost in October.

Putting a good face on the big October job loss, Vance told a reporter after his speech that those were federal government jobs eliminated by the Trump administration — with a plan in mind.

“That is, in a lot of ways, what we’re trying to do under President Trump’s leadership,” Vance said. “We wanted to fire bureaucrats and hire these Americans out here,” Vance said to applause.

As he spoke, Vance praised Mackenzie for his “dedication to American workers.”

Asked about the 4.6% November unemployment rate, the highest since 2021 during the pandemic, Vance was able to put a good spin on that as well.

Many of the unemployed may have lost their jobs two years ago, under Biden, and stopped looking for work, Vance said. Those people aren’t counted in the official unemployment statistics. Now, however, as we see wages rise and more investment stream into the United States, Vance said, the people sitting out the job search under Biden are getting “off the sidelines” and once again seeking jobs. As they do, they’re being counted as unemployed.

The high unemployment rate, then, is “exactly what we want,” Vance said. “That is happening under President Trump’s leadership.”

As he spoke, Vance explained Trump’s ideas to help Americans get by, including omitting taxes on tips and overtime, as well as creating a tax deduction for interest on auto loans.

These will lead to significant tax refunds, Vance said, adding that middle-class Pennsylvanians will see “the best tax season in 2026 that you’ve ever had.” That’s a result of Americans having “a president and Congress fighting for you for a change,” Vance said.

Vance responds to Vanity Fair article

In a tough question from a reporter, Vance was asked about a Vanity Fair article in which Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, described some of the people in the administration in less than flattering ways.

She said Trump has an “alcoholic’s personality”; Elon Musk is an ”avowed ketamine user” and an ”odd, odd duck”; Budget Director Russell Vought is “right-wing, absolute zealot”; and that Attorney General Pam Bondi ”completely whiffed” in handling the Epstein files.

As for Vance, Wiles said he’s “been a conspiracy theorist for a decade,” and that Vance’s crossover from a Trump critic to an ally was based on political expediency.

While Vance didn’t address the latter description, he agreed that he “sometimes” is a conspiracy theorist, but that he only believes “in conspiracies that are true.”

As an example, he said, he believed in “this crazy conspiracy theory that the media and government were covering up the fact that Joe Biden was clearly unable to do the job.”

Vance said it turns out that such conspiracy theories are just things that he discovered to be true “six months before the media admitted it.”

He hastened to add that if anyone in the Trump administration learned a lesson from the Vanity Fair article, it’s that “we should be giving fewer interviews to mainstream media.”