JD Vance bizarrely compares border issues to eating a really big sandwich

JD Vance bizarrely compared the US’s immigration and southern border challenges to eating a “really big sandwich” that is too big for your mouth.

In a speech at a base of the US veterans organization “Veterans of Foreign Wars” in Pennsylvania on Thursday, the Republican vice presidential candidate – whom his Democratic opponent Tim Walz had described as “strange” – responded to the question of whether the “largest deportation operation in American history” promised by Trump would require the use of the National Guard to round up millions of people.

Vance said he did not know but would not rule out the measure.

At this point, the Senator from Ohio offered a strange analogy as to how the matter might be handled.

“The first thing you have to do is stop the bleeding,” Vance told reporters.

“The second question is: OK, now that we’ve brought illegal immigration as close to zero as is physically possible, what are you and President Trump going to do with the 20 million illegal immigrants who are here?” – a number that is not supported by data.

“That’s a really big sandwich. It’s ten times the size of your mouth. How are you supposed to eat the whole thing?”

Vance then described the Trump-Vance administration’s plans to “eat” the problem by deporting illegal immigrants piece by piece.

“Well, you take the first bite, then the second bite, then the third bite,” he said. “And that’s how you deal with the 20 million illegal aliens that are here.”

In his speech, Vance also reiterated the Republicans’ main point that Kamala Harris is President Joe Biden’s “border czar” and is tasked with curbing border crossings at the US-Mexico border.

In reality, Harris was not in charge of the border. Rather, her job was to investigate the causes of migration from Central American countries such as Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

In his speech, Vance also expressed his opinion on the number of illegal immigrants he said have entered the United States since Harris became Vice President in 2020.

“It’s probably more like 25 or 30 million,” he said later, adding 10 million to his original figure.

It is not clear where Vance got his numbers from.

The Center for Immigration Studies estimated that there were 11.35 million illegal immigrants in the United States in January 2022 – a similar number to its estimate under the Trump administration in January 2019.

In fact, under the Biden administration, Democrats pushed for bipartisan border funding legislation in May that would have limited the number of migrants allowed to seek asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border.

But this bill was ultimately rejected by the Republicans at Trump’s behest.

Immigration is a key political issue ahead of the election campaign, at a time when Trump is already trailing Harris by about 2.7 percentage points in national polls.