WATCH: JD Vance Appears on Wildly Popular Theo Von Podcast (Video)

JD Vance (R) joins Theo Von (L) on the “This Past Weekend” podcast./Image: Video screenshot.

Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance sat down with popular podcaster Theo Von on “This Past Weekend.”

During the two-hour conversation, the two discussed everything from rising healthcare costs to the free flow of drugs through Biden-Harris’s open border.

Vance advocated for transparency in healthcare.

Theo Von: How do we not have real prices and transparency in health care, knowing that it’s exactly what America needs so that our health care system will be honest and affordable and accessible?

JD Vance: Well, you’re right that we should have it. And the reason that we don’t is, unfortunately, because there are a lot of powerful people who get rich off of keeping these things secret. And so they don’t want transparency. They don’t want sunshine.

Theo Von: You can say Chuck Schumer if you want.

JD Vance: I won’t say it. Well, look, you’re right, though. Obviously, Bernie and I aren’t on the same team politically, but there are some healthcare things like price transparency, where actually, I think he and President Trump are both right, that there’s nothing that…

You go to Starbucks, you buy coffee, you know how much you’re getting, you know how much it’s costing you. I remember when my wife, I think it was her second baby, where you get pain medications because when you’re delivering a baby, at least most people do, because it’s a very painful experience.

There was some weird thing where the doctor that she chose was out of network, and she didn’t realize…

I mean, you’re not checking whether the doctor is in network at the time, right? You’re just choosing a doctor.

Then we come home, and we have a $15,000 unexpected bill because she chose the wrong doctor an hour before she delivers a baby. It’s like, this is totally crazy. We’re in a situation where that was not a big deal for us. We were able to afford it. But think about a normal middle-class family goes and has a baby and comes home to a medical bill that’s a fifth of their entire take home pay that year.

Theo Von: That’s crazy. The number one cause of bankruptcy in America is medical debt.

JD Vance: Yeah, it’s a huge, huge problem. I think the price transparency is a big part of it.

Vance also said it is time to introduce the Drug Cartels to the United States Military.

JD Vance: There are two basic issues. It’s like any business, there’s a manufacturer, there’s a wholesaler, and then there’s the retail. And with fentanyl, you can’t make fentanyl in a trailer in somebody’s basement. It’s not like meth. It takes a really complicated, pretty sophisticated pharmaceutical process. So we know that a lot of it, maybe even most of it, the Chinese are making, meaning Chinese companies, not necessarily the Chinese government, but they sure as hell know about it.

And then they bring it in primarily through the Southern border. And the Mexican drug cartels are like the wholesalers, right? If the Chinese farm is the manufacturer, the drug cartels are bringing it wholesale style, and then it makes it in the street level.

The other thing people don’t realize about the cartels, man, is one, we’re talking about some very dark and dangerous people. This is not some guy who’s selling joints on a college campus. They’re doing sex trafficking. They’re getting 11, 10-year-old girls involved in the sex trade.They’re very evil people.

Theo Von: Dictator type of-

JD Vance: Oh, just absolutely vile. And it’s like, why are we making it easier for this massive criminal organizations to get richer and richer and richer. We should be trying to make them poor and help people who actually need it.

Theo Von: Well, it’s also… It’s obviously one of the biggest enemies. It’s like if there were an enemy that were killing… If there were somebody shooting in your country every day and killing people, at a certain point, you go over there, or you send your military there or do something to say, hey, we’re not going to let you do this anymore. That’s basically what’s happening.

JD Vance: That’s right. Can you imagine if Mexico sent gunmen across the border and killed 70,000 Americans a year? Because that’s about what dies from fentanyl. We would be in a major war, right? So it just absolutely would be the case.

So the other thing that’s crazy about this is, so these cartels, and you see this graphic up, it’s pretty interesting there. But the cartels are going to start to destabilize the country of Mexico. Do you know his name, Pablo Escobar?

Theo Von: Yeah, I do.

JD Vance: So the Colombian cartels in the ’70s were as powerful as the Columbian government. It was a narco-state. You don’t want that to happen right at the American Southern border, where the drug cartels have more power than the Mexican government. That’s just going to be chaotic. It’s going to be basically a warlike atmosphere on our Southern border.

Theo Von:That’s bad news. Well, it’s bad news, but it’d be great to figure out a way to shut it down. It just feels like, yeah, if that many people are dying each If there were actual people shooting at these people, we would send people there in a heartbeat.

JD Vance:I think that’s what we have to. I think not that we have to send people to Mexico, but I think that we actually have to have a military response at the Southern border.

Theo Von: A hundred %.

JD Vance: Because these are such vicious people. And I think local law enforcement, they’re telling us they’re overwhelmed by some of these guys. And we’ve got to be willing to send our best people, our best fighters, to get control of the Southern border. I think that’s the most important issue confronting the country. Because look, how do you even measure the human cost of 70,000 people, many of them in the prime of their life?

Theo Von: And the ripple effect of it, too, in their families.

JD Vance: The orphans, the parents that are heartbroken. I mean, how many kids are… It’s my story, right? That’s why my grandmother raised me is because my mom struggled with addiction. Luckily, my mom got clean. You’ve got hundreds of thousands of children who are being raised by their grandparents or their aunts and uncles. That is an unspeakable human tragedy, man.

Theo Von: Especially when we can do better.

JD Vance: We could do so much better, and we’re failing right now. And that’s one of the reasons why I’m here, one of the reasons why I’m running.

You can watch the full interview here:

 

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