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If Donald Trump is having doubts about JD Vance as his running mate, he doesn’t have long to choose a replacement, according to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
“The addition of JD Vance on this ticket is an incredibly bad choice,” Schumer said Sunday on Face the Nation. “Donald Trump, I know him, and he’s probably sitting and watching the TV, and every day it comes out Vance has done something more extreme, more weird, more erratic.”
The New York Democrat argues that the ballot access deadline in Vance’s home state of Ohio, August 7, is fast approaching, though the Ohio secretary of state says it’s been extended to September 1.
“And I’ll bet President Trump is sitting there scratching his head and wondering, why did I pick this guy?” Schumer went on, adding. “Does he keep Vance on the ticket?”
While Republicans may have had hope that Vance, who wrote a best-selling memoir about growing up poor in Ohio, might’ve added some youth and Rust Belt credibility to the ticket, so far, Vance’s name has been associated with a series of gaffes and embarrassing past comments.
He earned waves of bad press after an old clip resurfaced where he referred to top Democrats, including vice-president Harris, as “childless cat ladies,” while arguing those with children should have more political power than those without them.
Vance has also been under scrutiny for following white nationalists online and providing blurbs to far-right books labeling progressives “unhuman” and laying out the vision for Project 2025, an extreme set of model policies for a future Trump administration the former president has denied any connection with.
Most damningly, Vance previously told his law school roommate Trump might be “America’s Hitler.”
As a result of these and other embarrassments, Republican commentators and lawmakers have begun openly voicing their regret over Vance as a candidate, who was chosen before Joe Biden caused a seismic shift in the 2024 race by dropping out and likely ceding the stage to Kamala Harris.
One House Republican told Axios, “The road got a lot harder. He was the only pick that wasn’t the safe pick. And I think everyone has now realized that.”
Ben Shapiro, a conservative commentator, recently said on his show, “If you had a time machine, if you go back two weeks, would [Trump] have picked JD Vance again? I doubt it.”
