Vice President JD Vance joined Fourth of July celebrations aboard the aircraft carrier USS Kearsarge in New York Harbor for the Sail250 International Parade of Sail and aerial show of U.S. and international airships to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Vance’s V-22 Osprey helicopter landed on the deck of the aircraft carrier at 9:47 a.m. He was accompanied by his three children, acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao, and Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz.
More than 30 tall ships from allied nations sailed up the Hudson River from the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, past the USS Kearsarge, and continued up the Hudson River toward the George Washington Bridge.
Every 30 seconds or so, a new formation of jets flew over the International Parade of Sail. After the International Naval Review, Waltz and Cao delivered brief remarks before the vice president spoke.
Vance joked that his speechwriters wrote “a nice nine-hour address, it’s going to be a long day.”
Speaking for a full 25 minutes in temperatures of 90 degrees Fahrenheit, Vance talked about the forces that unite Americans across a history filled with resourcefulness and tenacity: “Connected through the generations, rich and poor of every job, we are a people formed by generations of self-governance and personal industry.
“Our history is one of people carving a great civilization out of the wilderness.”
He warned that some voices speak today not of America’s greatness but of its imperfections: “They will tell you that America is just another country where the weak struggle against the strong.
“These people misunderstand the essence of America. We all have moments of great power despite those very real imperfections, that there are victims and heroes who live inside of each of us.
“So what I'd ask you to do, my fellow Americans, on our 250th birthday is to reject the two-dimensional view of your fellow citizens and reject the two-dimensional view of your country.
“Everything that we have done as a country, we have done together. Not as citizens divided against each other, but as a common people working towards a common future.”
In the speech, Vance reached back to the days following the signing of the Declaration of Independence, as British troops gathered in New York Harbor in 1776. He reflected on how Gen. George Washington used the Declaration of Independence to inform and inspire his troops with the values for which they were being asked to fight.
The declaration was written for them, Vance said.
“It wasn’t written for historians,” he said. “It wasn’t written for academics. It wasn’t written for the generations to come. It was written for the people of this fledgling country. It was written for the soldiers who would fight to turn those words into a new system of government.”
He said Thomas Jefferson called the declaration an expression of the American mind, and, quoting Jefferson, said the Declaration was an effort “to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, the common sense of the American people.”
Vance highlighted the contribution of two naval shipbuilders: civil engineer James Buchanan Eads, who built ironclads for the Union during the Civil War, and industrialist Henry Kaiser, who helped rebuild the U.S. Navy after the Pearl Harbor attack.
Vance highlighted the stories of their hard work, ingenuity, and role in helping to preserve American freedom. And he also spoke of Kaiser looking after his workers’ welfare.
“Everywhere he went, he organized ordinary Americans to build extraordinary things,” said Vance, noting that Kaiser was a pioneer of health coverage who made sure that his workers could see a doctor. “And everywhere he went, he believed their welfare and the welfare of the enterprise that he was building went hand in hand.
“Where some say that America’s story is one of the dispossessed struggling against the powerful, Kaiser shows that America’s greatness is built by cooperation between all of our citizens from every single walk of American life.”
Vance spoke to an audience of naval officers, sailors, and invited guests, including gold star families and naval officers from allied countries that sent fighter jets or ships to join the naval review.
First Lt. Cody Swigart, who attended the celebration aboard the USS Kearsarge, told The Epoch Times that having the vice president visit was special.
“I thought it was really cool,” he said. “[The vice president] was a corporal in the Marine Corps, so that makes it a little bit more special than most times, for the Marines specifically.”
He said he appreciates when senior officers and officials make the time to come and visit, “even if it’s forward deployed or stateside.”
“It’s always cool when you get to meet people who are your boss, right?” Swigart said.
Sailor Michael Haley, an eight-year veteran of the Navy who handles computer systems and information technology on the USS Kearsarge, spoke with The Epoch Times.
Haley said the naval review was pretty awesome.
“Seeing not only ... our aircraft flying above but the foreign aircraft, and just the presentation of it ... was very spectacular,” he said.
