Trump sent his running mate to CNN to defend him, and to say it did not go well would be an understatement.
Here is the interview, which picks up after CNN had some audio difficulties:
Watch this full JD Vance interview on CNN and ask yourself if Vance is intentionally trying to lose the election. pic.twitter.com/qQ6XnV7qE2
— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) August 30, 2024
Vance was asked if Trump’s promise of free IVF for all was a government mandate, an expansion of Obamacare, and how it would be paid for, and he answered:
Well, look, I think you have insurance companies that obviously are forced to cover a whole host of services. The president explicitly said that he wants insurers to cover additional fertility treatments. I think it’s also important to point out that it’s become way too expensive to raise a family in this country. John, thanks to Kamala Harris’s policies, a lot of young families feel like they don’t have the ability to buy a home to raise a family and they can’t afford groceries.
If they have additional children, you can’t separate a pro life issue from the fact that it’s become way too expensive to afford a family thanks to Kamala Harris policies. And that’s the thing that Donald Trump most wants to change. How would this work if a state and you believe that state should have the right to make these decisions if a state bans IVF but Donald Trump says he wants to guarantee and, or pay for IVF for everyone who wants it.
Vance was asked a logical follow-up: doesn’t a federal free IVF mandate conflict with Trump’s claim that states get to make their own policy? and he dismissed the question, “I think it’s such a ridiculous hypothetical because Alabama, which is maybe the most conservative state in the entire union has actively protected fertility access and fertility treatments.”
Trump’s running mate was then asked about putting a Democrat in the cabinet, and he pointed to Russian asset Tulsi Gabbard, who isn’t even a Democrat, as a potential Trump administration pick.
JD Vance claimed that Trump is lifting people up with racist and sexist attacks that he called jokes. Vance said that Trump, “likes to have some fun and likes to tell some jokes. I’d much rather have a candidate who’s willing to go off script, who’s willing to give every interview and is willing to tell some jokes. I do think that’s how you lift people up. A politics of boring scolds telling people they can’t laugh. That is not lifting Americans up. That’s how to tear us down.”
The words “likes to tell jokes” and “Donald Trump” have never been used in the same sentence before.
Vance also refused to apologize for his own sexist attack on Kamala Harris where he posted a video of Caitlin Upton from a teen beauty pageant that went viral and Upton later said caused her to go into a depression and contemplate suicide.
To say that this interview was a disaster for the Trump campaign might be an understatement. Vance does active harm to the Trump campaign when he appears on television. JD Vance is so bad at campaigning that it is almost like he is doing this intentionally.
If JD Vance was Trump’s big pushback to the Harris-Walz CNN interview, Republicans are in big trouble.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
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