The Ohio senator Donald Trump dumbly chose as a running mate has spent his first few weeks on the ticket flailing, defending cruel past comments about “childless cat ladies” while enduring an entirely fabricated yet somehow kind-of-believable online rumor that he … how can I put this? … has an affection for couches .
Yeah. It’s not good.
JD Vance is giving all Americans a chance to learn to dislike him
Vance is swiftly showing the world there can be a Republican more cringe than Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and if Trump isn’t having buyer’s remorse, he certainly should be.
Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance speaks to reporters on the plane at the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport on July 31, 2024. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Here are some recent headlines Vance has garnered:
Congratulations, Donald Trump! You picked the worst VP candidate ever!
CNN host Harry Enten noted on social media : “JD Vance is making history as the least liked VP nominee (non-incumbent) since 1980 following his/her party's convention. He's the first to have a net negative favorable rating.”
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump tells the National Association of Black Journalists on July 31, 2024, that he didn't know that Vice President Kamala Harris is Black. "And now she wants to be known as Black," the former president said of the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. Harris' mother was an immigrant from India and her father is a Jamaican immigrant. Reuters
Undoubtedly, Trump has seen all this and is less than pleased that he’s paired with a mope. On Wednesday at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Chicago, he was asked if Vance could be ready to serve as president on day one. Trump notably didn’t answer, instead saying : “Historically, the vice president in terms of the election does not have any impact. I mean, virtually no impact."
That’s a nice way of saying: “JD Vance who? Never heard of ‘em.”
Vance has a long history of saying terrible things about childless people
Vance’s problems are many, and growing. Back in 2021, he told Fox News : “We're effectively run in this country, via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too. ... You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) – the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children, and how does it make any sense that we've turned our country over to people who don't really have a direct stake in it?”
Vance's lack of respect for women is turning off voters right and left
Vance seems to view women as baby-producing machines that need to up their game, and here in the year 2024, that sounds pretty damn weird.
Even the arch-conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board called out Vance’s “childless cat ladies” nonsense, suggesting he should have his wife do more appearances for him: “She might help persuade swing voters that Mr. Vance respects women more than his comments have made it seem.”
Jennifer Aniston, left, and Whoopi Goldberg, right, have criticized recently resurfaced comments by JD Vance about the U.S. being run "by a bunch of childless cat ladies." Kevin Winter and Monica Schipper/Getty Images
And then there's the whole thing with the couch ...
Outside the bad things about Vance that are true, an item completely fabricated by someone on social media has made the U.S. senator the butt of endless jokes. Someone falsely claimed that Vance’s book “Hillbilly Elegy” contains a passage in which Vance talks about how he once had sex with a couch.
For most normal political candidates, that kind of nonsense wouldn’t matter. But it’s clear there are enough people who don’t like Vance – or who think he actually seems like a guy who would be attracted to furniture – to provide fertile ground for such a lie to take root.
Vance is in the running for worst VP pick of all time
And therein lies the problem. Vance is profoundly unlikable. And he’s also a bad retail politician.
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Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance and his wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance, and kids greet supporters at a diner in St Cloud, Minn., on July 28, 2024. Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
Maybe replace him with someone who appeals to voters who aren’t bearded male misogynists. Or perhaps you could just jettison him, as you did with your last vice president (remember Mike Pence?) and all the former Cabinet members who now refuse to endorse you .
As you said, the vice president has “virtually no impact.” Be bold. Run without one.
It honestly couldn’t be worse than having the cat-lady-hating, alleged-sofa-enthusiast drip you were foolish enough to pick in the first place.
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