Vice President Mike Pence blasted Democrats who participated in the second round of 2020 Democratic debates in Detroit last night, calling the leading candidates’ defense of socialist proposals “remarkable,” Wednesday afternoon.
“It really is remarkable to see leading Democrats openly advocating an economic system that has impoverished millions around the world,” Pence said in an electrifying speech to the college students convened in Washington, D.C., for the Young America’s Foundation’s National Conservative Student Conference. “Last night’s Democratic debates wasn’t between moderates and liberals; it was between liberals and socialists.”
Pence further attacked Democrats’ signature health care proposal, “Medicare for All,” and criticized the Green New Deal as a waste of taxpayer money.
“The only thing green about the Green New Deal is how much green it’s going to cost,” Pence said to the receptive audience’s roaring applause.
Pence continued to attack socialism as a failed system and vowed that with the help of young conservatives in the room, the country would never steer down the path of countries such as Venezuela and North Korea.
“The moment America becomes a socialist country is the moment America ceases to be America,” Pence asserted. “So we must stay in this movement with one voice as president Trump said in his State of the Union address: America will never be a socialist country,” he continued, with students in the audience repeating Trump’s line from the annual speech along with the vice president.
Pence’s statements come a day after 10 Democrats took to the stage of the famous Fox Theatre in Detroit Tuesday night for a debate that largely focused on policy. Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., held their ground together against moderate candidates on stage who continually attacked the progressive proposals as fairytale policies that are unwinnable with the American public who won’t buy into them.
In his speech to one of the largest gatherings of college conservatives in the country, Pence also reaffirmed the Trump administration’s commitment to protecting free speech on college campuses and touted the foundation’s work in securing highly publicized legal victories at institutions such as the University of California, Berkeley.
“This is your moment,” Pence told students. “Freedom is winning on campuses all across America. We are not going to stop until freedom of speech is restored on every campus in this land.”
The Trump administration’s Department of Justice has filed several statements of interest in free speech cases on college campuses around the country, and Pence pledged the administration’s continued support.
