Vice President JD Vance sparked outrage Thursday night when he told a bizarre story about taking one of his children to the hospital.
Vance appeared on Fox News for a town hall with voters, where he told a brief story about him and his wife being "panicky" and taking one of their young children to the emergency room when "everything was fine." During the story, Vance said he became agitated that there were "nine different translators for nine different languages" while his family was seeking care.
"And I'm just thinking to myself, 'How about if everybody spoke English, and we could hire more doctors and fewer translators?'" Vance said, which sparked loud applause from the audience.
Vance's comments didn't go over so well with onlookers outside of the Fox News studio.
Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) argued in a post on X that Vance's comments show how far the Trump administration has strayed from the base that elected it in 2024.
"The Trump-Vance campaign ran Spanish commercials in 2024. All GOP campaign groups are spending money on Spanish media. Bunch of hypocrites," Gallego posted.
Based on Vance's xenophobic reaction, ex-GOP analyst Tim Miller speculated that the story must have happened before Vance became a Catholic.
"In this story, JD shares that he panicked & took his kid to the emergency room when he was totally fine. Instead of being relieved by that good news, he got upset that there are translators in the hospital helping the sick. This must’ve been before he was Catholic," Miller posted on X.
Andrew Donaldson, a journalist in West Virginia, highlighted the apparent irony in Vance's comments.
"Feller who had a bilingual wedding shares thoughts..." Donaldson posted on X.
JD Vance whines about translators in hospitals and says, "how about if everyone just spoke English?" https://t.co/3NrfOslLtT
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 30, 2026