Some Republican lawmakers worry that Vance won’t help Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris.
Some Republicans are starting to seriously regret Donald Trump’s vice presidential nominee, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance.
It’s been only one week since Vance was nominated at the Republican National Convention, and already his own party members are expressing severe doubts about Trump’s pick. The former president’s allies have acknowledged that nominating Vance was the product of Trump’s absolute certainty that he would be able to defeat Joe Biden in November. While Vance wouldn’t do much for swing voters or independents, he would likely shore up support among Trump’s base.
But ever since Biden passed the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s new presumptive nominee, Republicans have begun to sour on Vance.
“The road got a lot harder. He was the only pick that wasn’t the safe pick. And I think everyone has now realized that,” one House Republican told Axios Thursday, under the condition of anonymity.
Another House Republican told Axios that Vance “doesn’t add much.”
Yeah, it's actually not possible for me to imagine Republicans losing the presidency again without claiming fraud. Even if saying that directly stops playing as well, they will just move onto softer language about it. Like when they went from being directly racist to claiming all problems are certain immigrants' fault.
They will "just ask questions" about particular states' results. I don't think we will come back from that. It may even bleed over to Democrats saying it eventually, just because it's so established in the zeitgeist that it's possible, some lesser thinking Dems may run with it.
Notice how none of them hesitate to do this shit now. It's because they've started to internalize that democracy is bad because it doesn't give their party the advantages they feel entitled to.
Vance brings no new votes to the table. He is really just there because Peter Thiel agreed to donate to the campaign if Trump made him VP. When Biden was still in, the GOP believed that the election was as good as won so they didn’t believe they need to appeal to anyone else. Now that Kamala is running, the initial reaction and polling is showing that this race isn’t going to be easy for the GOP and Vance looks like a shitty pick.
And JD Vance has earned all the hate MAGA is going to send his way. Bending the knee may give short term gain, but it will ultimately ruin your life and legacy, like a whole list of these lifelong Republicans. The Lindsay Graham's and Ted Cruz's who took Trump's abuse and just cowered like the pathetic people they are.
MAGA will be in the history books beside the confederates as the traitor party.
No I think Trump and team figured they had this in the bag and no need to pick anyone else that could appeal to the normies. They are all in on MAGA and gods willing it explodes in their faves
Don't worry, the qons will always find a cop-out. This is the bunch that were suddenly full of "independents" who never even heard of this W guy after Iraq was so obviously a gigantic clusterfuck and who never even heard of this Romney guy after he got spanked by a Blah guy.
No, these people were suddenly teabaggers that were deep into this "tea party" that never was a thing before being made a thing by Faux and friends. Also, don't call them "teabaggers", they never, ever used that term for themselves (and don't go looking around for any proof of this or anything. Just believe the teabaggers, er, I mean the "tea party members" of this so-called truth).
hilarious that vance wrote an entire book blaming poor mountain people for causing their own problems and not bootstraps-ing themselves out of despair (like he did, naturally), and is now saying that biden's america is 100% to blame for those exact same problems
not to mention all the gigabytes of trash he's talked about trump, whose asshole vance is now slurping with the gusto of a dog in a steak factory
"Vance does worse in his home region at -16 points than he does in the average of all polls… So the people who know him best, the region that knows him best, they like him even less than America likes him.”
— Polling analyst Harry Enten, on CNN
Plus, betting markets have opened up on if he'll be retained on the ticket.
Plus, betting markets have opened up on if he’ll be retained on the ticket.
I'm not a betting man but I pretty much came to the comments to see if anyone else thought this too. "We" showed it's "ok" to drop out this close to the election so I 100% believe they're going to do the same with him and they can just have fox news say "the Democrats already did it so we're doing it to get back at them!" because if there's one thing maga loves more than beating up on (insert non cis/white/male people) it's revenge.
I like him better than I like Trump, but then I want them to lose. I would vote for the corpse of Richard Nixon before I considered voting for either of them.
I do outside sales in Ohio and I'm on the road a lot
The amount of people who have Trump / Pence signs and have put white tape over the P and E to make a V and A is ... Surreal. Like why do you still have signs from an election 8 years ago? Their house is probably full of cats and hoard and bugs. Can't wait to get updated signs?
There were a lot of memes involving mike pence having lightning powers, and often fighting anything gay with electricity. IIRC this all came from him allegedly advocating for electroshock therapy as a method of conversion therapy (which snopes said is false, and that's as much research as I'm putting into a tangent on meme history)
If you were an extreme project 2025 republican, Vance would have been the perfect candidate assuming that 1. The democrats would throw the election by running Biden with failing health. And 2. That Trump would die of a heart attack in a few years.
I legitimately can't think of another reason why they would have picked him. The Trump campaign and project 2025 were counting on both those facts being true.
It's actually sadder. Trump doesn't want a VP that can claim any credit for his electoral victory. If he picked anyone that people will say "strengthened him", he'd hate that.
He also just wants a yes man, he REALLY didn't like that Pence found his conscience while he was cleaning up after the election and didn't go along with "the election was stolen and thus Donald Trump is still president". Vance has no political compass - he has a weathervane that points towards whatever he thinks will get him power, so that's perfect.
It’s amazing how much Trump got played. The democrats had to know Biden was going to drop out when they scheduled the earliest presidential debate in history. It was all a show so people would demand Biden drop out before he actually dropped out.
And not only did Trump agree to it (cause his ego told him he would dominate), now he’s picked a god awful VP pick cause he thought he knew who his opponent was.
I'm more cynical about the DNC than anybody but - people daydream all the time about what could happen in the future if this or that happens. Some asshole right winger started daydreaming about taking over the Supreme Court back in the 1970s and it doesn't mean that he planned it all out but you can still think about the next few moves to be ready if the opportunity arises.
Somebody in the DNC imagined this scenario many months/years ago and talked about it to their bosses. Gaming out the possibilities and having the slide deck ready is how wild, game changing moves like this end up happening.
While I’m normally inclined to agree, this presidential debate was both historic in how early it was and historic in how bad Biden performed. There is no reason to be this aggressive about scheduling unless they know he’s either going to fail epically, or succeed epically.
I love that there's literally a video of Vance calling Trump a horrible person and they still picked him. Plus the whole couch-fucking thing. Good stuff.
Trump’s campaign, however, released a statement doubling down on the former president’s increasingly unpopular pick.
“President Trump is thrilled with the choice he made with Senator Vance, and they are the perfect team to take back the White House,” said campaign spokesman Steven Cheung, according to Axios.
Phony, creepy, terrifying.
And Steven Cheung, you need to understand nobody represents trump who doesn't get shit on. Just saying. It's your future. Hopefully you can represent yourself at trial.
There is. The more they stumble, the more they are questioned. The answers to the question cannot be anything but utmost certainty because "maybe" is simply not a message that sways anyone.
Pretty answers don't change reality though, so the stumbles continue or even increase leading to more questions and the doubling down. You just can't do anything else unless you're ready to commit to another answer.
Any second-in-command that was actually popular would be a threat to Trump, so that cannot be tolerated. He's got to find an uncharismatic sycophant smart enough to help him purge enemies, yet dumb enough to be incapable of plotting against him himself.
You know how some things are trashy when the poor do them, but accepted when the rich do them? Eric Trump is proof that "drinking heavily while pregnant" is one of those things.
The former president’s allies have acknowledged that nominating Vance was the product of Trump’s absolute certainty that he would be able to defeat Joe Biden in November.
I don't understand how they thought Vance be better against Biden.
It's not that he thought Vance was better. It's that he thought Biden was running such a weak campaign that it didn't matter who he picked as VP and he wanted the Thiel connection (and money) that Vance brings.