JD Vance Says GOP Must Reflect on Socialism’s Appeal: ‘We’ve Gotta Blame Ourselves’

Vice President JD Vance warned fellow Republicans against blaming young Americans for the rise of socialism during a Thursday appearance on Fox News, declaring that the GOP has “gotta blame ourselves” for its growing appeal.

The moment came on the network’s The Will Cain Show, after Fox News host Will Cain noted the success that Democratic socialist-alligned candidates have experienced recently, adding, “I think the real question — and I think it’s a question for you, it’s a question for Republicans at large — when a young person looks at their life and they say, you know, ‘I did what America asked me to do. I went to college. I got a job, and I don’t think I can afford the life that my parents could afford.’ Now, whether or not that’s statistically accurate, it is a real feeling, and a growing feeling. So, what is your answer to that young person?”

Praising Cain’s inquiry as “the exact right question to ask,” Vance continued, “Our response to that can’t be just to ignore the economic concerns that I think are feeding this rising interest in socialism.”

Emphasizing that he believes young people “deserve to have a good life in this country” and a “government that is making it easier,” the vice president added:

While these things sometimes take a little bit of time, we are already seeing the positive results come from [President Donald Trump’s] economic policies. We’re seeing trillions of dollars of new investment into this country, which means good middle-class jobs for young people, middle-income people, all across our country. We’re seeing housing prices finally stabilize — they doubled during [former President Joe Biden’s] administration. They have finally, kind of, flatlined during the first year and a half of the Trump administration.

We also wanna get interest rates down, of course, so that young people can afford a home. We want people to be able to afford the good things about this wonderful country that we all live in, and my warning to my fellow Republicans, Will, would be if we don’t get this right, don’t blame young people for being sympathetic to socialism. We’ve gotta blame ourselves.

Vance later remarked, “You don’t stop socialism by throwing slogans at people about the free market. As much as I love the free market, you stop socialism by making people’s lives better.”

Notably, a Reuters/Ipsos poll of 4,505 U.S. adults conducted in early August found that, for the first time in a decade, voters prefer Democrats over Republicans on the economy. The poll had a margin of error of 2 percentage points.

Watch the clip above via Fox News.

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