Exclusive – JD Vance on ‘America First’ Merle Haggard Walkout Music: ‘I Just Love the Opening Lyrics’

Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), the GOP vice-presidential nominee in the 2024 presidential election, told Breitbart News exclusively that he chose Merle Haggard’s song “America First” as his walkout music at events because the song “captures” the “theme” of the movement he believes in “better than anything I’ve heard.”

Vance, who came out at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to the song multiple times including during his big Wednesday evening acceptance speech, actually has used it as his walkout music at major events since way back in his 2022 U.S. Senate campaign. But the song hit a whole new level and much wider audience this summer when Vance used it at the RNC after former President Donald Trump, the GOP nominee for president again in 2024, picked Vance as his running mate.

“I just love the opening lyrics — ‘why don’t we liberate these United States, they’re the ones who need it the most,’” Vance told Breitbart News in a print interview last week, his first after becoming the vice-presidential nominee. “And really, it’s saying why don’t we stop trying to bring freedom and democracy to every far-flung corner of the globe using American troops to do it? Why don’t we bring freedom and democracy to our own country first and focus on rebuilding our own country before we focus on the problems elsewhere in the world? We have veterans sleeping under bridges and on park benches in our country, and yet we are bringing in 20 million illegal aliens and giving them luxury hotel rooms in New York City. It’s a complete insult to everybody who has actually served or loves this country and I just, you know, the whole movement is about getting American leadership to put our citizens first. I think that song captures that theme better than anything I’ve ever heard.”

Watch video:

One of the more interesting things about Haggard’s 2005 song is the fact that it criticizes the war in Iraq, one of the major moments during the administration of the last GOP president before Trump — former President George W. Bush — in that the lyrics specifically say the United States should get out of Iraq. Vance, during his RNC acceptance speech as the vice-presidential candidate, criticized the war in Iraq, something that would have been unthinkable at a Republican Party convention just a few years ago. Asked about this, and how the GOP has changed in a big way, Vance said that is “exactly right.” He added that Trump over the course of his life has been right about so many things that globalists were wrong about, and this election represents an “opportunity” to get someone back in the Oval Office who has “the foresight and wisdom” to see globalist “disasters” coming and prevent them from happening.

“We have the party of President Donald Trump, not of anybody else,” Vance said. “I think that metamorphosis is complete. You certainly saw that at the RNC Convention where eight years ago you had a lot of people skeptical of the party’s nominee but in 2024 you had extreme unity behind the party’s nominee. President Trump deserves a lot of credit for being right about some of the big disasters that the globalists have walked us into over the years. He was right about NAFTA, they were wrong. He was right about not letting China get sweetheart trade deals, they were wrong. He was right about not invading Iraq, they were wrong. I think it’s really important to note that over 40 years, most of which the guy wasn’t in public life or wasn’t a political leader at least, he has actually had the foresight to know when America’s leaders were walking us into a disaster. Isn’t that what we want out of an American president, somebody who has the foresight and wisdom to see these disasters coming? That’s exactly what you want in a political leader. Unfortunately, for most of my lifetime, we haven’t had that. Now we do. We have an opportunity to get it back in the Oval Office and that’s what our entire campaign is about of course.”

Interestingly, despite Democrats’ efforts to paint Vance as “weird” or extreme during his first couple weeks as the GOP candidate for vice president, he has in his two years as a senator a deep and serious bipartisan record working with Democrats to advance things like railroad safety and other infrastructure priorities in the wake of the East Palestine, Ohio, derailment, bank regulation after the Silicon Valley Bank and other bank failures thanks to the failures of Democrat President Joe Biden and Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris, and on protecting manufacturing jobs in the United States from the foreign globalist predators that Biden and Harris have empowered. Asked about this bipartisan record, Vance said he celebrates it because it’s “common sense.”

“I don’t think we should be spending hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign countries when we’ve got problems right here at home,” Vance said. “I don’t think we should be allowing large bank CEOs to drive their banks into the mountain, then to require a taxpayer bailout, and then to pay themselves fat bonuses afterwards. If taxpayers have to bail you out, you’ve got to pay back some of those bonuses. I don’t think it’s reasonable to have a trade policy that shifts manufacturing jobs to our biggest enemies. These are actually bipartisan issues, and to your point I’ve been able to work with Democrats on those questions. Of course, the media thinks it’s radical to put your own citizens first but I happen to think it’s common sense. I think most Americans agree.”