WASHINGTON — Vice President JD Vance advised immigrants to the US to give up their previous country’s loyalties and embrace American interests — saying it’s “offensive” to “use” their influence in a new country to settle conflicts in the old.
Vance, 40, took to X on Tuesday to rant about a Ukrainian American he met on the campaign trail who said the then-vice president didn’t have the nation’s interests in mind.
“During my senate campaign in 2022, I met a Ukrainian-American man in NE Ohio. He was very angry about my views on the conflict, and my desire to bring it to a rapid close,” Vance wrote, adding that the man told him, “You are trying to abandon my country, and I don’t like it.”
“‘Sir, I replied, ‘your country is the United States of America, and so is mine,’” Vance wrote.
The vice president added that he finds it “offensive” when individuals use American influence to try to end conflicts at home.
“I always found it offensive that a new immigrant to our country would be willing to use the power and influence of their new nation to settle the ethnic rivalries of the old. One of the most important parts of assimilation is seeing *your* country as the USA. It’s part of the bargain: if you’re welcomed into our national family, you ought to look out for the interests of the United States,” Vance continued in his lengthy X post.
“I know many immigrants who have the right perspective, and I’m grateful to them. For example, I met many Ukrainian Americans during that campaign (and since) who agreed with my views, or at the very least, asked the right question: what is in the best interests of the United States?”
The vice president has long been an outspoken critic of US military assistance to war-torn Ukraine, which just marked the three-year anniversary of Russia’s brutal invasion.
Even before the bloody war broke out in February 2022, Vance publicly stated that he didn’t “really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.”
In 2022, Vance had also disparaged Ukraine as a “corrupt nation run by oligarchs” and argued that his priority was combating the fentanyl crisis plaguing the US.
At the time, he had been a fledgling contender in Ohio’s bruising and crowded Senate GOP primary, during which he championed the “America First” approach to foreign policy.
President Trump, 78, subsequently endorsed him and Vance then sailed to victory.
The future vice president’s remarks sparked some well-documented blowback from Ukrainians living in Ohio and later in 2022, Vance clarified that “Vladimir Putin is the bad guy in this situation.”
Vance has long been a staunch defender of Trump’s efforts to end the raging war in Ukraine.
Last week, the US dispatched representatives to Saudi Arabia to speak with Russian counterparts about a path to end the conflict.
He’s also pressed for a deal with Kyiv to secure US access to the country’s vast mineral reserves.
Trump has teased that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will visit Washington, DC, on Friday, amid the push to finalize the mineral deal and touch base about nascent discussions to end the war.
The president has taken heat from Democrats and Republicans alike in recent days for his rhetoric towards Ukraine. Last week, for example, he called Zelensky a “dictator” after the Ukrainian leader suggested the president traffics in a “disinformation space.”
