Morning Joe mocked former President Donald Trump’s running mate, Senator JD Vance (R-OH), for his ongoing press tour to “clean up” his past “childless cat ladies” dig at liberal female lawmakers that required a “jaw-dropping” introduction on “forgiveness” by Fox News’ Trey Gowdy.
Before hosting Vance, Gowdy complimented Vance as “smart” and “talented” before he relayed a lengthy story about bumping into two celibate “childless” nuns at an airport who “love this country.” He continued that some would-be Trump voters, who choose not to have children or cannot, are “disappointed” at Vance’s 2021 comments but emphasized the case to conservative viewers that Americans were capable of “forgiveness” – as “The Good Book says.” He reflected that people who “talk for a living make mistakes.”
Mocking the fact that the Trump campaign was now in a tailspin around Vance’s comments and not focused on Democratic presumptive nominee Kamala Harris, the hosts and panelists on Morning Joe circled on the senator’s appearance on Fox News’ Sunday Night in America with Gowdy and replayed the clip.
Morning Joe host Jonathan Lemire reflected that Vance’s “rollout” as running mate was “not going all that well.”
Having played the clip, he added: “That is a jaw-dropping introduction of JD Vance on Fox News.”
Playing a further video of Vance’s response, Lemire passed commentary on to the panel, including former Obama White House Director of Communications Jen Palmieri.
Palmieri, adding that Vance had appeared on Friday’s episode of The Megyn Kelly Show on SiriusXM, said: “It does strike me when Vance decided to go on Megyn Kelly… [Conservative host] Megyn Kelly is persuasive in pitches: ‘Come on my show and clean this up.’ It’s something Trump never would have done.”
She continued: “Trump never would have apologized or tried to explain, but Vance keeps digging deeper and deeper into this hole. I mean, look at Trey’s own response to it. What’s he conveying to us in what he said? First of all, it is a moving thing about what he said about the nuns. It also suggests to me he does not think this is a winning ticket, right? When a Fox anchor is going out of their way to distance themselves from the running mate, it does not suggest to me that they think this is a winning message. And he keeps… you know, [Vance] basically apologizes to the cats, is what Vance does, right, but then not to the women.”
Palmieri then pressed on some of the policy evidence for Vance’s self-proclaimed “pro-family” values: “Does he support child care tax credits when that was up? Did he support that when it was up in Senate? I don’t believe he voted for that. He’s not acting on anything like this. This kind of stuff, this organic wildfire that, like, this is what fuels campaigns. Everyone gets it. It punctures through politics. It’s what, you know, this is the kind of lightning in a bottle that campaigns hope for.”
MSNBC political analyst Elise Jordan agreed: “I think you nailed it, though. Organic wildfire, lightning in a bottle. What happened last week with the liberal memes about JD Vance went mainstream. Outside of JD Vance’s base, outside of the Republican base, he has been branded, he has been defined as weird. Whether they like it or not, recovering from that is going to be next to impossible with most Americans, after what went down last week.”
Rounding on his attempt to dismiss his past remarks about women, Jordan added: “Then he just kept piling it on by not really showing an ounce of empathy and just saying: ‘I’m really sorry. I never would have wanted to hurt people who struggled with fertility issues. That’s not what I meant. I meant I want to support families.’ But, no, he has those sarcastic remarks that aren’t even funny. He shows he can’t really deliver a one-liner.”
Watch above on Morning Joe.
Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.com
Most Popular
Comments / 0