Vice President JD Vance traveled to Maine on Thursday to campaign for a Republican congressional candidate and expand the Trump administration’s campaign to root out fraud schemes across the country.Vance appeared alongside former Gov. Paul LePage, who is seeking election in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, in Bangor, where he picked up on themes he put down at a press conference on Wednesday.“Because I love this state, I can say I am heartbroken by what has happened to the fraud that’s being perpetrated on the taxpayers of this state,” he told the crowd. “Outside of Minnesota and California, which are probably No. 1 and No. 2, if they’re the gold medalist and the silver medalist — I heard somebody shout out ‘New York’ — maybe New York is the bronze medalist. But let me be honest, maybe Maine is the bronze medalist.”
Vance said the reason for this was that Gov. Janet Mills (D-ME) was refusing to cooperate with the federal government on the crackdown.
“If you look at the fraud that has happened in this state, if you look at the illegal immigrant communities who have taken benefits that ought to, by right, go to the people in this room,” he said. “What you have in Maine is a festering problem where people have been taken advantage of, and they’ve been stolen from, and your government hasn’t done anything about it.”
