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On Monday, Trump sat down with his running mate for their first joint interview. Fox’s Jesse Watters noted J.D. Vance had “beat out a lot of impressive people” for the VP nomination. “Very impressive people,” Vance replied, nodding. Trump said he and the senator from Ohio had “automatic chemistry.”
But behind the scenes, Trump might be having buyer’s remorse over his new veep pick.
Outwardly, the Trump campaign insists they are still the “perfect team.” But on X, Atlantic writer Tim Alberta reports that some Trump allies have been “second-guessing” the choice of Vance, acknowledging the selection was “borne of cockiness, meant to run up margins with the base in a blowout rather than persuade swing voters in a nail-biter.”
That strategy worked when Trump was facing off with 81-year-old Biden. Now that fresh-faced Kamala Harris, 59, is at the top of the ticket, the race is suddenly a lot more competitive. Two polls taken after Biden dropped out and endorsed Harris found she is neck and neck with Trump in the presidential race. And having another white male who speaks fluent Rust Belt MAGA on the ticket doesn’t give Trump any important advantages.
GOP strategist Tricia McLaughlin acknowledged this problem even before Biden bowed out. “J.D. Vance just doubles down on what Donald Trump already has,” McLaughlin told The Free Press at the RNC. Trump “already has those factions,” and Vance “might energize that base more, but they’re already pretty energized.”
Less than a week ago, conservatives were excited to see Vance, the 39-year-old author of Hillbilly Elegy, “wipe the floor” with Harris in a debate. But in securing the number one slot, Harris will have the opportunity to handpick her own Vance-mopper. One possibility is Kentucky governor Andy Beshear who has already attacked Vance as a “phony” with “no convictions.” Another is Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, who is noted for his oratory skills.
Harris’s ascent to the top of the ticket also brings Vance’s vulnerabilities into sharp focus.
First, there’s abortion. Harris is expected to make abortion access a key line of attack in her campaign against Trump. And while Trump is trying to steer the GOP toward a more popular stance on the issue (legal, but with restrictions), Vance, a recent Catholic convert, has taken a much more uncompromising approach. During a January 2022 podcast, Vance said he “would like abortion to be illegal nationally.” And up until last week when he was chosen as Trump’s VP, he called himself “100 percent pro-life” on his campaign website and coupled that with an endorsement of Ohio’s six-week ban under the headline “End Abortion.”
And while all politicians are guilty of changing their minds, Vance is in the uncomfortable position of having routinely criticized his own running mate. Back in 2016, he mused that Trump might be “America’s Hitler,” and that the MAGA leader was “leading the white working class to a very dark place.”
Finally, Trump and Vance aren’t as politically aligned as they might appear. Last month, after the Heritage Foundation prepared a policy blueprint for a second Trump term, called Project 2025, Trump disowned it, saying he had “nothing to do” with the people behind it and that some of its contents were “ridiculous and abysmal.”
But guess who is a fan of the people behind it? A clue can be found in the new book penned by Project 2025 captain Kevin Roberts. Entitled Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America, it outlines a peaceful second revolution for American voters.
The person who wrote the foreword is none other than J.D. Vance, who is full of praise for the author: “Never before has a figure with Roberts’s depth and stature within the American Right tried to articulate a genuinely new future for conservatism,” Vance writes. “We are now all realizing that it’s time to circle the wagons and load the muskets. In the fights that lay ahead, these ideas are an essential weapon.” Oops.
Madeleine Kearns is an associate editor at The Free Press. Follow her on X @madeleinekearns.
Trump seemingly picked the best candidate to execute his vision and perform the duties of a VP (and possibly beyond if Vance becomes the nominee in '28) versus the best candidate that would help him get elected. Ideally, that's what you would hope a presidential candidate would do, though it's rarely the case. Personally, I would've loved Tulsi Gabbard to be the pick, but am fine with JD Vance.
I like Vance as a pick please hear me out. Vance is an eloquent speaker, smart on his feet and will actually do something at a VP. I think Trump is taking the long view of his future administration. You might think that is too presumptive but Vance makes sense in this light. Glen Youngkin is a fine man and VA might have helped Trump win but not the man for the VP office. If DJT wins this election, Vance will be a worthy and capable partner.