'This is a disgrace': Vance slams Harris on border crisis over child drug deaths

Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance on Thursday excoriated Vice President Kamala Harris over the Biden administration's handling of the southern border and the rampant drug trafficking through it, highlighting the child death toll from such activities.

Vance made the remarks amid the Democratic National Convention at an event in Valdosta, Ga.

"I want to get a little bit personal here, because the sheriffs here did something for me that I've actually never seen," he began. "They took me in to the investigation room and showed me some of the stuff that they have interdicted over the last few months, just here in this community."

He further expressed surprise that the community would face such issues given its distance from the southern border, but insisted "every town is a border town, and every state is a border state because of the policies of Kamala Harris."

"What they showed me were boxes of candy that looked like nerds look, like sour patch kids, look like Snickers bars. And there are boxes of candy that are actually dangerous drugs," he said. "And why did the drug cartels manufacture them like that? Because they wanted to hide them from law enforcement."

He then fumed at Harris and Biden for permitting such activities within the U.S.

"Think about how sick you would have to be to manufacture drugs that look like children's candy, and think about how sick Kamala Harris has to be to let those people do business in our country instead of throwing them the hell out of our country, which is exactly what we should be doing," he insisted. "This is a disgrace, ladies and gentlemen. This is a disgrace born of our own failed leadership, and we can do so much better."

Vance went on to highlight the irreversible impact of a child mistakenly consuming such drugs and lamented that children had effectively lost the ability to make mistakes at young ages.

"I remember thinking to myself that don't we want our kids to grow up in communities where they can make the mistakes that all kids make, and they can learn from it, rather than have it become a death sentence, because we all know we either have kids we work all of us were kids at one point in our life," he said. "We all know that kids are going to get into stuff that parents and grandparents don't want them to get into. That's just a part of growing up in this country."

"We have got to get back to the kind of country where kids can make childhood mistakes, and the Mexican drug cartels are not going to be there to take advantage of them, and I think that's what this election is ultimately about," Vance continued. "We know that kids aren't always going to be perfect, but let's build the kind of Georgia, let's build the kind of country where our kids can learn and grow. We're going to do it together, but only if you get us across the finish line in Georgia."

The Ohio Republican made the remarks as part of Republican counterprogramming to the DNC. Former President Donald Trump is expected to speak from the southern border later on Thursday.