What Exactly Did The Trump Campaign Vet J.D. Vance For?
It's not been a great few days for J. D. Vance
![[JD Vance]](https://otb.cachefly.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/JD-Vance-edited.jpg)
Last week at the start of the Republican National Convention, former President Trump announced junior Ohio Senator J. D. Vance as his running mate. This selection has led to new scrutiny of the first-term senator. What’s been coming out since then isn’t defining Vance in the best light.
I’m going to table talking about the most salacious rumors (also I know they will quickly come up in the comments) and stick to the more grounded material. The one that is currently most in the public consiousness are Vance’s on the record comments about women (and couples) that don’t have children. I’ll turn to USA Today for the details:
In the days after Sen. JD Vance completed the Republican presidential ticket and Vice President Kamala Harris moved to the top spot on the Democratic ticket, a video of Vance implying Harris is a miserable, childless cat lady resurfaced online.
Vance appeared on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight” in July 2021 while he was running for Ohio’s U.S. Senate seat. The video shared by the editor-in-chief of the pro-democracy MeidasTouch Network has more than 18 million views on X less than 24 hours after posting.
Vance also argued in the interview that people without children don’t have a “direct stake” in the future of this country.
This type of quote speaks to a certain subsection of the MAGA base, but it comes at the cost of alienating others. For example, after the end of Roe vs Wade, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos used for invitro fertilization (IVF) were legally children:
In 2011, a court decision in Alabama in the case of Mack v. Carmack – in which the plaintiff had a miscarriage after a car accident – found that the Wrongful Death Act could be applied to the death of the fetus in the miscarriage. Years later, in 2018, a key constitutional amendment was passed in Alabama declaring that “it is the public policy of the state to recognize and support the sanctity of unborn life and the rights of unborn children.”
Although the amendment was passed to restrict abortions, the Alabama Supreme Court pointed to that 2018 measure to recognize embryos as persons under state law, saying the amendmentallowed for a more expansive view of the law at issue in the case.
“When it comes to the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act, that means coming down on the side of including, rather than excluding, children who have not yet been born,” the ruling reads.
Also in this recent case, “lawyers have applied an 1872 law that allows couples to sue for wrongful death of a minor child. The Alabama Supreme Court has now stated that embryos outside of the uterus are the legal equivalent of a child, and anything that can happen to an embryo can be considered the wrongful death of a minor, with legal consequences,” Dr. Shaun Williams, a partner in reproductive endocrinology at the Connecticut-based clinic Illume Fertility, wrote in an email. He was not involved in the Alabama case but has been tracking it closely as a fertility specialist.
“It is one more step that the State of Alabama has taken to limit abortion access, even though the goal of fertility treatments is to build a family and to have children, IVF clinics are the only location where embryos actually exist outside the human body,” he said. “The most concerning aspect about this ruling is that it will make it much more difficult for some couples in Alabama to overcome the devastating emotional and social consequences of infertility. Traveling to another state is often not feasible for fertility treatments which often involve multiple visits to a clinic during each treatment month.”
The fallout of this decision kicked off a discussion about IVF that had long reaching consequences. Many Republican and Conservative pundits recognized that while the theoretical reasoning of the decision might have been correct, coming out against IVF would alienate the many Americans (Republicans included) who either used IVF to help conceive or know someone who used IVF. This even shifted Trump’s position, abandoning his previous calls for a national ban on abortion and explicitly stating that he supports IVF.
Vance’s comments only have served to revive this issue–especially given that IVF is not guaranteed to work. Additionally, they alienate people who don’t have biological children but are steppartents (including, I will note Vice President Harris). This is especially problematic given Trump’s historic unpopularity with women, including those within his own party. While Trump did slightly better with women in 2020 than he did in 2016 it’s still and ongoing weakness for him. From Pew:
Trump won a slightly larger share of women’s votes in 2020 than in 2016 (44% vs. 39%), while Biden’s share among women was nearly identical to Clinton’s (55% vs. 54%)
What’s astounding to me is that this footage is not very old. In fact, Vance made similiar recorded comments around the same time. This is exactly what should have showed up in vetting and yet, so far, the campaign has not issued any response.
The “cat women issue” may also be the tip of the Iceberg. Mother Jones is reporting that Vance also endorsed a book published in July coauthored by far-right activist and Pizzagate promoter Jack Posobiec. From the article:
The book, Unhumans: The Secret History of Communist Revolutions (and How to Crush Them), was written by Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec. Posobiec is a well-known alt-right agitator and conservative media personality who promoted the bonkers Pizzagate conspiracy theory. Lisec is a professional ghostwriter. And their book professes to be a history of communist and leftist revolutionary abuses over the decades—but with a twist. They claim, “For as long as there have been beauty and truth, love and life, there have also been the ugly liars who hate and kill.” And these “people of anti-civilization” have always gone by different names: communists, socialists, leftists, and progressives. The pair contend these folks—be they the Bolsheviks of Russia or the BLM activists of this decade—are better called “unhumans.” …
It’s a hard-edged message. The foes of conservatism are not merely misguided souls pushing the wrong policies but people who seek to annihilate civilization. They “rob” and “kill,” Posobiec and Lisec maintain: “They don’t believe what they say. They don’t care about winning debates. They don’t even want equality. They just want an excuse to destroy everything. They want an excuse to destroy you.” …
The book (with a foreword written by Steve Bannon) is a far-right declaration of war that accuses conservatives of not understanding that the left cares only about one thing: revolution to achieve total control. The unhumans aim to “kill the people who have more” than they do. As they put it, “On a base level, unhumans seek the death of the successful and the desecration of the beautiful.” They decry the far left atrocities of the past (the French Revolution and the communist revolutions in Russia, China, and elsewhere) and claim the same malignant force is shaping the present, noting that the “chief institutions of consensus-making” in today’s society “are controlled by radicals and infiltrated by unhumans.” The book comes across as modern-day McCarthyism: This dark menace has infiltrated nooks and crannies across America, from the boardroom to the classroom to even churches. No surprise, Posobiec and Lisec have plenty of praise for Sen. Joseph McCarthy.
In their view, the dangerous unhumans are everywhere. The Civil Rights movement? Mounted by unhumans. Critics of hate speech? Unhumans. The Black Lives Matter protests? Organized by unhumans. In fact, they compare the BLM protests of 2020 to the terror of the French Revolution, noting, “There is no way to reason with those who manipulate the have-nots en masse to loot and to shoot. They simply hate those who are good-looking and successful.” (Yes, they wrote that.)
Again, while this speaks to a subset of the MAGA base, perhaps even to some who read OTB, this is an extreme and potentially alientating viewpoint for more centrist Republican voters. And the book contains the following endorsement from Vance:
In the past, communists marched in the streets waving red flags. Today, they march through HR [Human Resources], college campuses, and courtrooms to wage lawfare against good, honest people. In Unhumans, Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec reveal their plans and show us what to do to fight back.
Again, this associate theoretically should have come up in vetting and still they went ahead with the selection of Vance.
At this point, I am honestly curious what the logic was behind choosing Vance instead of the more traditional Republicans who we were told were being considered including Senators Marco Rubio and Tim Scott and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum.
While some have suggested the goal is to shore up votes in places like Ohio. This seems a bit strange given Vance’s underperformance in the 2022 general election. From Business Insider:
While Vance won the race that November, the extent of his struggles was on full display on election night.
Vance defeated Ryan by 6 points.
But Republican Gov. Mike DeWine defeated his Democratic opponent, former Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley, by 25 points. And both Attorney General Dave Yost and Secretary of State Frank LaRose were reelected by roughly 20 points.
Ryan was undoubtedly a strong candidate, but Vance’s underperformance relative to other Ohio Republicans was quite stark. One might even argue that DeWine’s coattails helped carry Vance over the finish line as Ryan clearly won over many voters who also backed statewide Republican officeholders.
Additionally, Vance also was on record of strongly opposing Trump before he came to be one of the former President’s most ardent supporters. So there already was a lot of media materials that could be used against the new Vice Presidential candidate.
From my perspective, beyond any personal affinity Trump has for Vance, it’s unclear what Vance actually brings to the ticket. Yes his anti-abortion and Christian Nationalist views are popular with the far Right. But those people were already Ride or Die Trump. What remains to be seen, especially if more alienating quotes come out, is the impact Vance will have on the more moderate wing of the Trump coalition.
To that point, Vance’s polling since the convention has been a mixed bag for Republicans. From Forbes:
A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted Monday and Tuesday found a slight shift in Vance’s favorability numbers, with 32% of respondents thinking of him favorably compared to 24% the prior week, though his unfavorability also increased, jumping from 30% to 39%.
An NPR/PBS News/Marist poll conducted Monday asking whether registered voters found Vance favorable or unfavorable found more (36%) were unsure or had not heard of him—though numbers were different along party lines, with 51% of Democrats finding him unfavorable compared to 11% of Republicans, and 57% of Republicans finding him favorable compared to 18% of Democrats.
A Monday-Tuesday CNN poll compared Vance’s favorability to what it was among registered voters in late June—before the convention—and found his favorability jumped from 13% to 28% while his unfavorability jumped from 20% to 34% and the amount of respondents who had never heard of him fell from 51% to 16%.
Note that all of that polling occurred prior to the “Cat Lady” comments coming out. Of course, there is still time between now and election day for Vance to make a positive impact on voters. However, that also means there is still time for more damaging material to come out. As usual, only time will tell.
What makes you think the campaign had any influence over Trump’s pick?
According to a link someone posted a couple of days ago, Trump initially wanted some governor but Don Jr. and Eric persuaded him to pick Vance instead. (I’m kind of dubious about this because I’m not aware Trump cares all that much about his sons’ opinions.)
Another thing that would matter with Trump would be that he could see Vance standing up to the Dark State over the election results. Vance wouldn’t wimp out like Pence did. Of course this is both looking in the rearview mirror and assuming all kinds of future things that won’t happen but Trump and reality are moving apart at the speed of sound.
Summary: he personally picked Vance because Vance hit the right buttons. The campaign had very little to do with it. But that doesn’t mean they won’t get blamed for it when Vance falls out of grace with Trump.
@Not the IT Dept.:
What IT Dept said. There was no vetting. Vance rubbed Trump’s erogenous zones. That’s it.
(Heh, heh. He said “rubbed erogenous zones.”)
It has not been a great few days for Vance, but imagine how the couch feels.
Will nobody think of the poor Davenport?
Bottom line: Nobody groveled harder than Vance, while also promising to not be held back by mere constitutional duties if it comes to that.
This was likely the entire vetting process.
Occam’s Butterknife:
Trump vetted him for his Peter Thiel/tech money connections and, for Trump, that was the end of the hunt.
Picking Vance is a strong signal to the far right, to keep them on board when Trump moves to the center for the general election. He says he isn’t in favor of a national abortion ban, but he selects JD Vance.
From USAToday:
He also implied that Pete Buttigieg is a miserable, childless cat lady.
I half expect to see Trump saying that the LGB in LGBT+ is fine, so he seems less extreme, while letting Vance do the wink and nod to the far right to let them know he doesn’t mean it. I say “half expect” because I don’t think Trump has the discipline to pull it off. Maybe the ok ones will be just the L, and the B when they are women.
People keep assuming that Vance meant “America’s Hitler” in a bad way. In some circles on the right that would be flirting. I’m not going to try to guess what is in Vance’s heart (deep desire for power), but someone should ask him.
@Gustopher:
Again, we have been hearing about a move to the center from Trump for years, but what are actual examples of said move?
It’s the woman and the snake fable all over again.
Two reasons he fellated the Felon to a degree greater than others and was a convert to boot. Gross overconfidence. The Felon and at least his family believed the election was in the bag and it would be an electoral college landslide. Vance was a guarantee that the MAGA movement would continue, since Vance’s earlier objections to the Felon weren’t policy differences but that the Felon wasn’t the right future dictator.
I assumed Vance excelled at the Convicted Felon’s favorite sport: kissing the orange ass.
In F1 racing it’s silly season with driver contracts being negotiated and seats being swapped. Much of the controversy centers around Sergio Perez, Red Bull No. 2 driver. He has consistently finished well below his championship leading No. 1 in ostensibly an identical car. Why has he had the ride for years? Apparently because his family are buddies with Carlos Slim, richest man in Mexico, through whom Perez has sponsorship that pays a lot of money to the team. This is called a “pay driver”.
Given Vances relationship to Peter Thiel, I assume Vance is a “pay VP”. The best kind from Trump’s point of view.
I highly doubt that there was a traditional vetting for this slot. Trump likely had a list of names of people he’d tolerate, and Vance bubbled to the top apparently at the behest of Don Jr., who, frankly, is a political dunce.
They are (were?) so convinced this would be a cakewalk that they didn’t bother with a normal, thorough vetting because they (incorrectly) assumed that hey, this guy got elected recently so there can’t be any skeletons in his closet.
Ohio is not the national stage, and if these idiots can’t spend a few hours reviewing previous tape from (checks notes) a FOX NEWS PROGRAM, they deserve the blowback.
The psychology of Trump draws him to those who have resisted him in the past but grovel before him today. It makes him feel strong. And since that’s all you have to do to win favor with him, Vance become the pick.
Never get complicated by assuming Trump has deeper reasons for any decision, it’s always what makes him feel good NOW.
I agree with what @Not the IT Dept.: and @Gustopher: said and add in that I think one of the reasons he was choses was that he brings in money guys like Thiel, Musk and I’m assuming some of the other rich fash weirdos. I think those three things together in Trumps head was all he needed.
Also, we need to stop pretending he was going to choose Tim Scott. Once I read this*:
I knew Scott was cooked. Looking back, that should have been it for Stefanik or any other woman as well. Trump will never, ever, have a black person or a woman as a VP. Except for maybe Ivanka. But that’s it’s on scary thing.
* This article: https://slate.com/culture/2024/05/donald-trump-news-2024-trial-verdict-apprentice.html
@dazedandconfused:
I’m stealing this, will be using liberally (ha) throughout the election. Well done.
1) He’s servile.
2) Utterly amoral and opportunistic.
3) He’s a good tuches lecker – ass-licker.
4) He’s as ugly as Trump and a lousy speaker, so no chance of stealing the spotlight.
5) He has a hot wife who he’d happily loan to Trump.
One guess as to why Trump wanted Vance is that Vance’s rise both as a celebrity and politician involved something familiar to Trump, pure branding. A venture capitalist who sold himself as a hillbilly. And how do we know he’s a hillbilly? Because he sold a book that had that word in the title. He’s the Appalachian version of Trump Wine.
@mattbernius:
He has been running away from the traditional Republican position on a national abortion ban ever since it was revealed to be amazingly unpopular in practice. Right now he’s claiming that “Everyone wanted it to go to the states, but only I did it”
In 2016 he ran to the left of Hillary Clinton on economics, saying that people like him should be paying more taxes. Also, she was a war hawk and he was going to get us out of Afghanistan. And he loved gay people.
In the run up to 2020 he was making sounds about there being too many Blacks in prisons and that they were being treated unfair. I don’t remember the details about it, but there was a Rapper involved. He either signed something minor or pardoned someone or something.
He never meant a word of it, but he swings to the center for the general election. This year, when abortion has to be one of those center swings, I think he really needs to show the base that he doesn’t mean any of it.
He picked him because Trump and Vance are both unqualified, unlikeable weirdos who crave sex with weird things. In Epstein-bestie felon Trump’s case, it’s teenage girls — including his own daughter.
In Vance’s case, it’s couches.
No vetting took place.
It was a seat of the pants decision.
Vice-Presidential picks aren’t really a factor on election day.
I’m old enough to remember the Thomas Eagleton debacle. McGovern was going to lose no matter who was on the ticket with him.
“Additionally, they alienate people who don’t have biological children but are steppartents ”
Hey, they also alienate those of us who don’t have any children at all. There is nothing in the constitution that says only people who have reproduced are considered to be full citizens.
@Not the IT Dept.: I see your point but will note that in a weak party model of the sort Dr. Taylor talks about, that the party’s say might be small is also to be expected rather than an anomaly. Additionally, I, personally, am just as inclined to speculate that vetting did happen and that this choice comes under “feature rather than bug.” There may well be no significant numbers of “more centrist Republicans” anymore.
@wr:
Given that I squarely fall into that category, I apologize for not explicitly calling that out. That was a complete writing oversight on my part.
I will also point out that you and I (and others like us) are keeping company with commie-Libtards like George Washington and James Madison.
Not to mention staunch Trump supporters like Tim Scott and Lindsey Graham. Then again, I don’t know where Vance stands on men who don’t have biological children.
@wr:
Given that I squarely fall into that category, I apologize for not explicitly calling that out. That was a complete writing oversight on my part.
I will also point out that you and I (and others like us) are keeping company with commie-Libtards like George Washington and James Madison.
Not to mention staunch Trump supporters like Tim Scott and Lindsey Graham. Then again, I don’t know where Vance stands on men who don’t have biological children.
Trump has claimed repeatedly that he always makes decisions on the basis of what his gut tells him to do. So I suppose his gut told him to pick Vance.
@CSK: I find that hard to believe. Vance doesn’t look anything like a hamberder.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I think this is closer to reality in our particular universe.
But then again, I spent the morning listening to upper management venting about the ungrateful nature of the revolting peasants.
ETA:
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Grinch maybe, but not a hamberder.
Trump has always had a dilemma: who should inherit the MAGA kingdom? In his rational moments he must know neither of his idiot older sons is up to the task. I imagine he’d love Ivanka to step up, but she seems to have rejected the idea. Therefore he’s been choosing a successor, not a running mate.
Vance is utterly dependent on the Trump MAGA machine for his political survival. There is no way he could mount an insurgency from the vice presidency, or campaign in 2028 as anything but Trump’s heir. Other candidates, such as Rubio or a state governor, could move to distance themselves from a president Trump if he were to become unpopular, and turn to pre-existing networks of donors and political allies for support. Vance can’t do that. He’s Trump’s best bet for accepting the MAGA torch and doing what he’s told by Trump’s wholly-owned Republican Party. It would collapse into in-fighting the moment Trump died, but I’m sure Trump refuses to take that eventuality into account in his vision of the future.
By Vance’s math, a family with one child has 1/3rd the rights as a family with 3 children and 1/8th the rights as a family with 8 children…like, this is not a policy that’s going to be accepted by anybody, really, normal fascist or not. These guys try to come off as reactionaries with unpleasant but real solutions to problems. But their solutions are so stupid even if one thinks a problem exists that it’s all just Trump-like posture.
Anyway, most red state Trump voting Americans think having 2-3 kids is enough. They aren’t like Christian weirdos with fucked-up families and Duggar-like understandings of sex, life, and consent, and for good reason. They might even make jokes about childless cat ladies, but they want their daughters to go to normal college and to be kept far away from the Christian right.
Trump may have actually screwed it with Vance. VPs don’t matter. Even with someone like Palin or Quayle, the jokes did not reveal anything new about ambitious hicks or dumb white midwestern white guys. But most people don’t know how dull, charmless, and crazy-sounding right-wing tech-types are. If you showed a bunch of MAGA guys at a sports bar a 5-minute speech by Curtis Yarvin they wouldn’t know what to do if it came out that this guy was influential with dipshits like Musk, Thiel, and Vance. They would have more connection to some queer 20-year old talking about Gaza than Curtis Yarvin. Trump has basically done that, all on his own.
@Modulo Myself:
Yep
The JD Vance vice-presidential candidacy: going well, sofa.
🙂
@JohnSF:
That’s offal.
It’s not that JDV had nonconsensual relations with a couch….
It’s that it is a believable scenario.
It’s worth pointing out that the “childless unhappy cat ladies” thing is the tip of the iceberg with Vance. He’s also advocated for lower tax rates for couples with children (not sure if the Buttigiegs would qualify for this or not), and weighted voting for couples with children, saying explicitly that people with children should have more rights than those without.
So, yeah, he’s insane and this needs to be on repeat from now until November.
@Jen:
Not insane, he is a fanatic – “religion,” Christian Nationalism mostly. He is tight with Leonard Leo as example.
“ProPublica”
snip
snip
Etc., etc. – lots more at link.
@Jen:
Not insane, he is a fanatic – “religion,” Christian Nationalism mostly. He is tight with Leonard Leo as example.
“ProPublica”
snip
snip
Etc., etc. – lots more at link.
@Jen:
Not insane, he is a fanatic – “religion,” Christian Nationalism mostly. He is tight with Leonard Leo as example.
“ProPublica”
snip
snip
Etc., etc. – lots more at link.
Vetting JD Vance was very rigorous. Remember when, back in 1985, upon winning an Oscar, Sally Fields, exclaimed, “You like me, you really like me,”
With Trump it’s, “You love me don’t you, you really better love me.”
Reportedly, Vance adjusted his MAGA kneepads,smiled, and said, “I do.”