When Donald Trump tapped JD Vance, the US senator and never-Trumper turned Maga superstar, as his vice-presidential pick, the Rust belt populist was in for a rude awakening.
In a viral video, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz called Vance and the Maga movement “just weird”, an insult that quickly became a meme. The reintroduction of his past remarks on the impropriety of “childless cat ladies” being involved in government spread almost as fast as an online joke about the Ohioan having intimate relations with a couch.
Other viral videos of Vance struggling to make small talk and awkwardly laughing at himself during campaign events seemed to give the impression of an unserious candidate. The Hillbilly Elegy author and former Silicon Valley investor appeared to lack the charisma of his running mate, and for much of the summer, pundits wondered whether Trump regretted his pick.
But Vance has powered through, holding swing state rallies, stumping at fundraisers and appearing frequently in combative interviews on popular – and not always friendly – TV news shows.
On the campaign trail, Vance thrives in elevating Trump’s most combative campaign tactics, in particular, demonizing immigrants, discrediting the press and effectively riling up the crowd on both topics.
“Journalism in this country is increasingly a disgrace,” said Vance, complaining during a 23 September campaign stop in North Carolina about reporters investigating his claims that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, had stolen and eaten residents’ family pets. In Traverse City, Michigan, two days later, he called for the deportation of “millions of illegal aliens”, blaming Kamala Harris for letting them into the country.
To many Trump supporters, the Ohio senator’s hardcore nativist message and populist record make him an effective messenger for the campaign’s biggest issues: immigration and the economy. Just how effective he is with a wider audience will be put to the test during the vice-presidential debate on Tuesday.
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No stranger to hyperbolic anti-immigrant speech, Vance, who during his 2022 Senate campaign floated the “great replacement” conspiracy theory that Democrats facilitate immigration to increase their election margins, escalated the GOP rhetoric in mid-September.
It started when unfounded claims that members of the Haitian immigrant community in Springfield, Ohio, had killed and eaten the pets of local residents circulated on rightwing social media accounts, gaining traction among the neo-Nazi group Blood Tribe, according to NPR. Local Republican party officials picked up the claims, and JD Vance brought them into the mainstream, posting on X on 10 September: “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country. Where is our border czar?”
During the presidential debate that night, Trump himself echoed the claims in a now-infamous rant. The condemnation came swiftly, but Vance doubled down – even apparently justifying the practice of lying to make a point.
“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m gonna do,” said Vance, when pressed by Dana Bash about his claims during a CNN interview on 15 September.
That week, Springfield officials responded to repeated bomb threats against public buildings in the area, including ones that invoked anti-immigrant speech. On 16 September, the local schools were forced to evacuate amid the violent threats, and the Ohio governor, Mike DeWine, a Republican who has himself disputed the claims about Haitian Springfield residents, announced that he was sending highway patrol officers as reinforcement security in the schools.
It didn’t seem to matter how many times local officials in Springfield disputed the claims, or how many journalists traveled to Springfield to investigate – and debunk – the racist rumors. During a series of campaign events, Vance defended himself, proving his willingness to power through controversy and apparent disregard for the consequences of his rhetoric.
In Wisconsin on 17 September, Vance waved away a question about his apparent tendency to “create stories”, saying that he meant he wanted to “create stories” in the sense of making news, and not to create stories as in, making stuff up. It was the media’s fault, not his, for misunderstanding him.
During a Q&A session with the press in front of the crowd, a reporter asked Vance: “You say you have a responsibility to share what your constituents tell you, but do you also have a responsibility to factcheck them first?” Vance pounced.
“Well, I think the media has a responsibility to factcheck the residents!” Vance said, drawing a cheer of approval from the hundreds who had turned out to hear him speak. He also seemed to reject journalists’ attempts to factcheck him, saying reporters who travelled to Ohio to investigate alleged reports about Haitian immigrants were “not seeking the truth” but rather “bullying”.
Mac Stipanovich, a retired Republican party operative from Florida, was upset by Vance’s comments about Haitian Ohio residents – and questioned the strategic value of openly bashing immigrants.
“I thought originally that his goal was to win the general election, and that he was going to be a next generation person who didn’t have all of Trump’s baggage, who might appeal to a broader audience and help the campaign in the general election. As it’s turned out, he is just campaigning to win a national Republican primary. In many ways, he’s more Trump than Trump.” said Stipanovic.
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Media coverage of Vance has largely focused on his stunning pivot from wholeheartedly opposing Trump’s rise in 2016 – even comparing the former president to Hitler – and his drift toward the “new right”, with its emphasis on restricting immigration, promoting economic populism and valorizing the heterosexual nuclear family.
Vance’s ideological path and political circles are key to understanding the candidate and how he could govern in office.
But what the coverage of Vance’s role on the campaign so far may miss is how effectively Vance plays to the Trump base.
Vance has proved his ability to keep up a combative back-and-forth in televised interviews, and has adopted a rally format that allows him to showcase this.
After delivering remarks, Vance opens up the floor to reporter questions, offering journalists from local and national outlets the opportunity to get in a question for him to riff on. The format is a crowd pleaser: often, before Vance has a chance to respond to the question, his audience will answer for him, drowning out the reporter and setting Vance up to riff on the subject at hand.
During the Wisconsin rally, the crowd shouted down a reporter who asked Vance to respond to Harris’s denunciation of the “hateful rhetoric” about migrants.
“That’s basically my response,” said Vance. “Loud boos and two thumbs down.”
Later, during a 23 September campaign stop in Charlotte, North Carolina, Vance again married his defense of claims about Haitian immigrants with attacks on the press.
“My responsibility is to listen to the people that I serve, and not a biased media,” he told the crowd. He claimed that the residents of East Palestine, Ohio – where a train derailed and exploded in 2023 – were treated “like enemies by the American media”. It was not immediately clear what press coverage Vance was describing, but his indignant remarks drew applause.
“I will always listen to you,” said Vance. “Even when the media attacks me, I will listen to you about what’s going on in your communities, because that’s what a leader ought to do.”
Vance’s impact on the race so far is not totally clear. He has consistently polled somewhat poorly, although polling has not showed a dramatic dip in favorability in the last month. Many Republicans who support the ticket enough to attend in-person campaign events told the Guardian they liked what they saw in Vance. Jacob Spaeth, who owns a small business in Minnesota and traveled to Wisconsin to see the senator speak this month, said he was impressed by Vance.
“I didn’t really know him, to be honest, beforehand,” said Spaeth. “But after seeing everything he’s said, I think he’s a strong pick.”
In a column in early September, Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the conservative thinktank Ethics and Public Policy Center, advised Vance to keep “plowing through the maze”, rather than bombing interviews and then hiding from the press like Sarah Palin during her disastrous national debut as John McCain’s vice-presidential running mate in 2008.
So far, Olsen told the Guardian, he feels Vance has stayed the course.
“Unlike a lot of candidates who get trained to deliver their talking points over and over and over again, he actually engages with a question and is able to have an ongoing dialog or battle,” depending on the tenor of the interview, Olsen said. “I think it’s distinctive in modern campaigning.”
