Vice President JD Vance silenced an otherwise raucous crowd Friday after he recounted the harrowing story of Kevin Flanagan, a computer programmer from California. During his speech in Middletown, Ohio, supporting gubernatorial nominee Vivek Ramaswamy and Senator Jon Husted (R-Ohio), Vance described how Flanagan was laid off by Bank of America.
“ heating a computer programmer, not a mill worker, a computer worker by the name of Kevin Flanagan was let go at the bank that he worked at,” Vance said. “And the business, the bank, they told him, ‘You’re only gonna get your severance package if you train a foreign replacement to do your job instead.’”
“And it’s a heartbreaking story, because he did it; he dutifully did what he was asked to do,” he added. “And on his last day, he packed up his things, he walked to the office parking lot, and he shot himself.”
Vance connected Flanagan’s story to the opioid crisis, stating: “It’s not just Kevin, as you all know. Now economists have measured the ways in which the opioid crisis exploded in the very locations where jobs were shipped overseas.” He continued, “The open borders demanded by those same people brought some innocent people; of course it did. But we also know that it brought a lot of cartels. It brought the fentanyl trade, and it left us with millions of orphaned children being raised by aggrieved grandparents.”
Flanagan’s death in 2003 made national headlines. In a note he left behind, he wrote that he finally felt at home when he got his job at Bank of America. Vance closed his remarks by praising Louisiana Democrat Senator Huey P. Long from the 1930s: “Huey Long … once said ‘every man a king’ was the goal of his political program, but no man is a king if their castle is under siege by criminals.” He concluded with: “No man is a king if they can’t take their family out to dinner without being mugged or having their car jacked.”
