President Trump’s running mate, Senator JD Vance (R-OH), issued a strong statement on X which he followed up with blistering comments in person.
In a post on X, Vance reflected the growing sentiment within the Democratic Party for Biden to withdraw from the presidential race.
“Everyone calling on Joe Biden to *stop running* without also calling on him to resign the presidency is engaged in an absurd level of cynicism,” he tweeted. “If you can’t run, you can’t serve. He should resign now.”
Vance blasted Vice President Kamala Harris at his first rally as Trump’s VP pick on Saturday in Michigan.
“Now, I’ve had such an incredible, a blessed week. What a cool thing it was to be asked by President Trump to serve as his running mate and get out there on the campaign trail. But there’s some bad news actually,” Vance told a crowd in Grand Rapids.
“The vice president – Kamala Harris – she doesn’t like me. Kamala Harris said something to the effect that I have no loyalty to this country,” he continued.
“Well, I don’t know Kamala. I did serve in the United States Marine Corps and built a business. What the hell have you done other than collect a check?”
Harris blasted Vance at a campaign event in North Carolina on Thursday. “It’s a compelling story,” Harris claimed. “And, it was not the full story.”
“Frankly, what is very telling is what he did not talk about on that stage. He did not talk about Project 2025, their 900-page blueprint for a second Trump term,” she warned. “He did not talk about it because their plans are extreme and they are divisive.”
Meanwhile, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg drew parallels between Trump’s new running mate and former Vice President Mike Pence.
“I guess maybe not as a politician but as a human being what I’ll say is that I hope things work out a little bit better for JD Vance than they did for Mike Pence,” Buttigieg remarked during an appearance on “Real Time with Bill Maher” on Friday.
Buttigieg said that Pence gave up his Evangelical values to be on Trump’s ticket, and warned that Vance, who called the ex-president “cultural heroin” in 2016, might end up doing the same thing.
“I knew a lot of people like him when I got to Harvard,” Buttigieg said about Vance. “I found a lot of people like him who would say whatever they needed to get ahead, and 5 years ago that seemed like being the anti-Trump Republican.”
Since then, the first term senator has become a staunch Trump supporter and has championed his policy positions, including advocating for reduced funding to Ukraine amid its conflict with Russia and contesting the 2020 election results.
Buttigieg cautioned that Vance’s lockstep with Trump could have adverse political repercussions, citing the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack as a turning point in Pence’s political career.
Trump had pressured Pence to challenge Biden’s electoral victory, but Pence resisted, lacking constitutional authority to do so.
“It ended on the west front of the Capitol with Trump supporters proposing that he be hanged for using the one shred of Integrity he still had to stand up to an attempt to overthrow the government,” Buttigieg told the outlet.
On the other side of the aisle, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee (R) praised Trump’s choice of
Vance, asserting that the first term lawmaker’s relative lack of political experience is beneficial.
“When people say JD Vance hasn’t been in office that long … good,” Huckabee told NewsNation’s Hena Doba on Saturday.
“The longer people stay in a political office, particularly if it’s in Washington, more so than anywhere else, they get infected by this horrible Potomac River disease,” he noted.
Huckabee applauded Vance for writing about the struggles of his low-income upbringing the best-selling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” suggesting that adding him to Trump’s ballot signifies a positive shift for the party.
“The Republican Party in the past has been the silk-stocking, country club, elitist party of the east and west coast. It isn’t anymore,” Huckabee commented.
“It’s a working class party. I love this change,” he continued. “JD Vance is the perfect embodiment of that.
Huckabee also pointed out that former President Obama also rose quicly through the political ranks, serving a brief Senate term before his successful presidential campaign in 2008.
“Barack Obama was heralded as the greatest thing that ever happened to politics,” Huckabee noted.
For sure, I just know we REALLY want to take Democrats’ advice about how to campaign for President/Veep. Sure thing, folks!
And the democreeps policies are not divisive? Boy, what a bunch of uniters SloJoe and company are.
Truth But will HE
She’s talking about loyalty to America? She and her boss violated their oaths on the first day, by opening our borders to an invasion threatening the USA. Total disgrace, but at least when they open their mouths to accuse, we know exactly what THEY are doing. It’s called projecting.