“Martha, do you hear yourself?”

That phrase could become JD Vance’s battle cry, in the closing days of the presidential campaign, if it hasn’t already.

Especially when it comes to dealing with one-sided, left-wing media personalities hell-bent on defeating Donald Trump and Vance, his running mate.

“Martha, do you hear yourself?” Vance, 40, incredulously asked ABC’s Martha Raddatz, 71, when the network’s veteran correspondent attempted to downplay the violent takeover by a Venezuelan immigrant gang of an apartment complexes in Aurora, Colorado.

Raddatz, reading her questions from notes that sounded as though they were from a Democrat Party playbook, called the violent takeovers “incidents” that were “grossly exaggerated” by Trump.

The Republican candidate for president said earlier that the city had been “invaded and conquered” by illegal immigrant criminals from Venezuela.

Trump, campaigning in Aurora, vowed that, if elected, he would invoke the 1798 Alien Enemies Act—calling it Operation Aurora—to arrest and deport criminal illegal immigrants. If caught reentering the country, they would face a 10-year prison sentence.

“I will rescue Aurora and every town that has been invaded and conquered,” Trump said.

In her questioning Raddatz said, “The incidents were limited to a handful of apartment complexes.” She called them “a handful of problems.”

To which Vance replied, “Only, Martha? Do you hear yourself? Only a handful of apartment complexes were taken over by Venezuelan gangs, and Donald Trump is the problem, and not Kamala Harris’ open border?

“Americans are so fed up with what’s going on, and they have every right to be. I really find this exchange, Martha, sort of interesting because you seem to be more focused with nitpicking everything that Donald Trump has said, rather than acknowledging that apartment complexes in the United States of America are being taken over by violent gangs.”

Vance added, “When you let people in by the millions—most of whom are unvetted, most of them you don’t know who they really are– you’re going to have problems like this.”

At least ten individuals with ties to the violent Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua were arrested in September after they gained control of an Aurora apartment complex and engaged in extortion child prostitution and other criminal acts.

Raddatz, taken to task on the Venezuelan gangs, could not move on to the next subject soon enough.

And while Vance schooled Raddatz on Aurora and the Venezuelan gangs, he—unlike Trump—maintained his usual cool, concise and collected manner.

Vance, despite initial criticism of Trump by some Republicans for choosing him as his running mate, has proven to be the star of the campaign, especially when compared to Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’ running mate, who cannot let a day go by without a blunder or two.

Walz is lucky he did not shoot himself, or somebody else, in the foot last week when he awkwardly tried to load the shotgun he was carrying at a staged Minnesota pheasant hunt held to show off his manliness.

It is as easy for conservatives and others to mock Raddatz. Her questions were more statements of Washington Democrat establishment policy than anything else.

Raddatz, who worked in Boston for WCVB-TV as Martha Bradley (she was then married to Ben Bradley Jr. of the Boston Globe) beginning in 1979 and established herself as a solid reporter.

However, things change when reporters get to Washington, where to be accepted politically and socially by the Democrat establishment that runs the place, you must swallow and promote the party line, lies and all.

Otherwise, you will be shunned and shamed by the deep state operatives who run Washington, no matter who is president.

This means that you must read from the Democrat Party playbook, when conducting interviews with Republicans like Trump and Vance. Instead of simply asking questions, you must confront, challenge, and seek to demean them, the way Raddatz sought to do with Vance.

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It is confrontational journalism aimed at Republicans, and it is journalism at its worse.

In this case it backfired, but it got Raddatz a lot of Washington high fives.

Peter Lucas is a veteran political reporter. Email him at: peter.lucas@bostonherald.com