Tucker Carlson, JD Vance in Hershey: Most revealing moments

He swills Diet Mountain Dew to keep his caffeine quotient high on the campaign trail.

He can handle the rollercoasters at Hersheypark. But going on a spinning ride with his sons earlier Saturday nearly caused him to lose his lunch.

And Republican VP candidate JD Vance says he sometimes regrets penning his highly praised tome, 'Hillbilly Elegy,' because it allows elites to look down upon the working-class Appalachian residents from which he sprang.

These were just some of the personal moments Vance made public before an enthusiastic crowd of thousands as he sat for a wide-ranging interview by conservative media personality Tucker Carlson. This as Carlson's 'live tour' made a stop Saturday evening at the Giant Center in Derry Township.

The show - Carlson's 11th on his tour - was delayed more than an hour because of the advanced Secret Service security screenings that slowed the entrance of thousands of fans who filled the lower bowl of the arena more accustomed to hosting hockey games and rock concerts – not political theater.

And while Carlson has plenty of fans willing to plunk down money for tickets costing $35 and up, the former FOX News firebrand has plenty of critics, too. Notably, the Kamala Harris campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

DNC Rapid Response Director Alex Floyd released a written statement that read in part: "Vance will take the stage with Tucker Carlson, a far-right extremist who platformed a Holocaust denier and echoes the worst elements of Trump's hateful agenda. The American people reject this type of vitriolic extremism, even if Donald Trump and Vance continue to embrace purveyors of hate."

On stage with Carlson and before a crowd of partisan supporters - many in full MAGA regalia - Vance came off rather disarming, thoughtful and introspective about many of his personal and political beliefs – and those of his opponents.

Here are some of Vance's most revealing moments in Saturday night's interview with Carlson:

Hersheypark's 'spiny ride'

Vance didn't identify by name the ride that he said nearly caused him to hurl and cancel his evening appearance with Carlson. But here's how he described the misadventure earlier in the day: "It's one of these things where it's not just spinning around, but then the thing that you're sitting in is also spinning. It's like spinning. To myself, I'm thinking I'm going to throw up all over this ride. And all I can think is if I throw up in this thing, it's going to be like one of those old sprinklers, you know?"

Vance warned the crowd about what he called "subversive polls" designed to "depress you" about the campaign by showing Harris with a lead. He said part of the issue is Trump supporters don't like to be polled, even his own relatives. "Like if you called my family members and said, 'hey, I'm from such-and-such research, are you gonna vote for Donald Trump?' They would say, 'F-you' and hang up. So because of that, it's very hard to poll Trump supporters." Vance went on to reassure the crowd that the campaign's "internal polls that we pay a lot more money for" are "great."

Uni-party

Vance lumped together both Republican and Democrat leadership over the last 30 years and blamed it for turning "the American people into paupers," adding: "You're not going to own anything. We're not going to own a house because the leadership has made it way too expensive to buy a house. You're not going to have real public safety in your communities, and you're going to import 25 million people to overstress the legal system. We're going to stress in the police system. You're not actually going to have a decent job because we're gonna ship way too many middle-class jobs off to China, off to Mexico. And so the American people, I think they're fed up with it."

Political realignment

Carlson commented on the "realignment between the parties," adding: "Just to put it in one sentence, you got Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and they got Dick Cheney and his horrible daughter (Liz Cheney)."

Vance, a first-term senator from Ohio, said his two years in Washington have shown him that D.C. politics is little more than "a chess game with the lives of other people." He added: "They go out and play strategic games with the lives of other people's children. And there's probably nobody who better represents that, of course, than Liz and Dick Cheney. So that's one thing that's going on is if you don't think the United States should get involved in every stupid war the world, then you're a Republican. And if you think the United States should send billions of dollars and tons of innocent Americans to die in some foreign country, then you're (a Democrat)."

Springfield, Ohio, and Charleroi, Pa.

Legal Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, and Charleroi, Pa., have grabbed headlines recently after Vance, Trump and the Republicans thrust the issue into the national spotlight. Without mentioning unsubstantiated claims of pets being eaten, Vance explained his view of the politics at play: "So there are people who say that this is fundamentally necessary because unless you import all of these people, there aren't going to be any jobs. I actually think that sort of gets it exactly upside down. The reason why people left these communities is because our leadership shipped all of their jobs to Mexico and China and other countries. So if you want to fix the problem, bring economic prosperity back to our country. Don't bring 20,000 laborers in a small-town world."

'Hillbilly Elegy' regrets

Vance's painful personal tome put him on the map. But the writer expressed regret over how his book has been used by so-called 'elites.'

Said Vance: "What I had done was write a very personal story about my grandmother and my mom and my sister. And there's sort of a triumph, and there is trial. My mom struggled with addiction and then she got clean, and my grandmother raised me."

But at a business conference that Vance, who went on to graduate from Yale Law School, attended he said he felt "dirty" upon realizing "a lot of our leaders like the book not because they really sort of sympathize with the story." Rather, he said, "they pick one paragraph out and say, 'oh well this thing shows that these ... working class people are bad, or they're racist, or they're not worth focusing our attention on and we shouldn't save their jobs. They use it as an excuse to ignore the citizens of the country, and I started to feel kind of dirty about participating in this way that our leaders used my book. They try to look down on their fellow citizens rather than, maybe, learn something about their fellow citizens and recommit them to making their lives better. That fundamental breakdown you see in our politics, like all the time."

Muzzling the middle class

Vance said the problems in rural and working-class America reflect poorly on political leaders. But rather than hear out these complaints and deal with the issues, leaders attempt to silence this population with accusations of racism and other tactics.

Said Vance: "We'll let 20,000 Haitians into this small town. The employers will be happy because they'll get some cheap labor... But when the rural people, the small town people, the working class people start complaining about it, then you have to actually confront whether these things that you have done have actually made people's lives better. Rural America and the problems in rural America just show how much their (leaders') entire world view is broken. And so it's sort of reflects back at them their own failure and their own lack of concern for their fellow citizens... Better that you can say that people who are complaining are bad and evil people, and the reason they're complaining is not because I screwed up, but because they are screwed-up people. The people who refuse to say 'thank you for making my life miserable,' they represent an opposition and a rebellion against our failed leadership class."

Shameless media

Both Carlson and Vance took a swipe at what they called the "shameless media" and their sudden elevation of Kamala Harris as a generational presidential candidate after years of her unimpressive vice presidency.

Said Carlson: "Every Democrat I know...they made fun of her. And then like within 24 hours, she's this historic statesman. How was the media able to pull that off, honestly?"

Answered Vance: "A lot of a lot of shamelessness."

He added that both he and Trump are now attempting to "shame" the media into putting pressure on Harris to submit to more media interviews.

Said Vance: "We do a lot of interviews. President Trump is doing a ton of interviews with hostile media, with friendly media, with everybody in the middle. And Kamala Harris doesn't. Now part of the argument we're trying to make is that to the American people, you shouldn't trust a person who's so terrified of the media that she runs away from them. You can't trust that person. We've been trying to shame the American media into looking themselves in the mirror and asking her some tough questions that actually report on her record. Your job is to not repeat Kamala Harris propaganda without at least getting a chance to ask her a question. We're telling Kamala Harris you should do more interviews. You should get out there more because we get about 100,000 votes every time you open your mouth."