4 Takeaways From The Night Of JD Vance’s Big Introduction At The GOP Convention

The third night of the Republican Convention in Milwaukee had two goals: introduce audiences to the MAGA 2.0 take on foreign policy, and to former President Trump’s newly selected vice presidential candidate, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH). 

In both cases, what was included was as notable as what wasn’t. 

Here are four takeaways from RNC night three. 

Vance’s identity politics 

For Vance, a politician who burst into conservative politics thanks in part to support from a Silicon Valley billionaire, Wednesday night was a branding exercise. During his speech, he pointed toward his hardscrabble background to build trust with voters, seemingly trying to lend credibility to claims that would otherwise ring false about the Republican Party’s supposed future of fighting multinational corporations or protecting Social Security. 

As he concluded, he seized on an idea that came up at other times throughout the evening: That America is not just an idea, it’s a place. He took the theme of American identity and ran with it, suggesting America is a nation in the oldest sense of the word.

“It’s a people with a common history,” he said.

It was a somewhat-quiet, somewhat-obvious dog whistle, gesturing toward the idea there are, as some on the far-right contend, “heritage Americans.” That is, Americans whose ancestors have lived here for generations, and who therefore, the argument goes, have a deeper understanding of what the country means. It’s a view of nationhood that’s long existed everywhere but here, and whose absence has long made our country exceptional.

It’s also a means of leaning into what may be a defining theme of a potential Trump second term: ending birthright citizenship and restricting legal immigration. 

Where’s Ukraine?

For a night supposedly devoted to foreign policy, there was almost no mention of Ukraine. Vance focused almost exclusively on the U.S., alluding only generally to NAFTA and the war in Iraq as factors that shaped his political outlook. A few speakers mentioned Ukraine in passing, saying that Russia’s invasion would not have happened under Trump. But the war-torn country was mostly ignored.

The omission was notable. Vance has been an aggressive critic of sending support to Ukraine, voting against the delayed supplemental passed this year; Trump, famously, tried to extort its president.

Instead, the “Make America Strong Once Again” theme focused on what the right sees as examples of America’s current weakness: protests on college campuses, Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks, Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal.

Neither Ukraine — nor Taiwan, for that matter — received any sustained attention. This could be positive news for both countries: who knows what the focus would have brought? But it demonstrates how far the GOP has moved away from its Cold War-era foreign policy positions.

Nothing to see here

The third night of the convention unfolded in split screen, with news breaking that Democratic leaders had warned Joe Biden that his candidacy was a drag on the ticket, while the president himself tested positive for COVID. 

No doubt aware of the situation broadly, if not its specifics, the convention tried to reassure viewers that Trump’s agenda is not, in fact, scary. Forget what you’ve heard about Project 2025. Forget Trump’s first term! There was no mention of Trump’s baseless claims that he actually won the 2020 election; Vance called him the “once and future President” at one point, but most speakers ignored Trump’s 2020 loss entirely. Usha Vance introduced her husband, one of the most rhetorically right-wing members of the Senate, as a “meat and potatoes guy” who still learned to cook vegetarian Indian food for his mother-in-law.

At times, some speakers took potshots at Vice President Kamala Harris, as if hedging their bets on who the GOP’s final opponent would be. 

But looming over it all was a snide sense that the party understood itself to be on the path to victory, if only it could avoid attracting too much attention. “I don’t believe in coincidences,” Donald Trump Jr. said as he described the attempt to assassinate his father. “But I do believe in God’s plan.”

Trump’s former ICE head makes an impression

Thomas Homan, ICE director for the first two years of Trump’s term, spoke early in the night, but made an impression. 

He’s already become a minor influencer on the right: he runs a nonprofit that sends out speakers who paint a doomy picture of immigration to America. Homan spoke last week at the National Conservatism conference, where he said: “They ain’t seen shit yet. Wait until 2025.”

Homan channeled that energy Wednesday night, with a statement to all the illegal aliens out there: “You better start packing to go home.”

For a longtime federal employee, Homan had a surprising flair for the dramatic. He added, with some real venom in his voice, that Trump will designate the cartels terrorist organizations and destroy them. “You’re done!” he shouted. “You’re done!”