Republicans are beginning to have second thoughts about JD Vance

Some Republicans are openly having second thoughts about former President Donald Trump’s choice of running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance.

The senator has received negative attention after old clips resurfaced of him calling some Democrats, including Vice President and presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, “childless cat ladies” and arguing that people with children should have more influence over the future of the country than those without children. The vice president has two stepchildren.

Harris, who would be the first Black South Asian woman president, has seen massive influxes in fundraising since President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the 2024 race and threw his support to her. Over the weekend, her campaign announced that they’d raised $200 million over the seven days since Biden’s exit, with the Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue crediting her with driving multiple broken fundraising records during her first week atop the Democratic ticket.

She also secured enough delegates to claim the nomination at the Democratic National Convention next month within days, averting what could have been a messy fight when the party returns to Chicago for the first time since the tumultuous 1968 convention after then-president Lyndon Johnson withdrew from that year’s race.

The Trump campaign picked Vance just days before Biden revealed his exit, at a time when Trump was riding high after surviving an assassination attempt. But now, GOP influencers and prominent party figures are wondering if the ex-president made the right call.

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.”

“I think he probably would have picked someone like [Governor] Glenn Youngkin from Virginia in an attempt to broaden out his base,” he added.

“There was clearly zero vetting of JD Vance. Clearly a vibes pick by an overconfident Trump that is proving to be a disaster,” former Trump White House Communications Director Alyssa Farah Griffin wrote on X after The New York Times revealed that Vance wrote “I hate the police” in an email after the killing of 18-year-old Black man Michael Brown by a white officer in October 2014.

“Given the number of negative experiences I’ve had in the past few years, I can’t imagine what a Black guy goes through,” he added at the time.

Wisconsin Republican strategist Bill McCosten told Politico that “Of the people that were mentioned as finalists, he had the most risk, because he had never been vetted nationally.”

He added, “Doug Burgum ran for president, he had been vetted, mostly. Marco Rubio has run for president, he had been vetted. JD Vance hadn’t. So there was risk in the pick. And we’re going to see over the next 102 days how he stands up to the bright lights of a national campaign.”

A member of the House Republican caucus anonymously told the outlet: “Find me one publicly elected official in the Senate who is pushing JD Vance other than [Utah Republican Senator] Mike Lee. I’ll wait.”

This week, an NPR/PBS News/Marist College poll found that 28 per cent of registered voters hold a favorable view of Vance and that 31 per cent have an unfavorable view – 41 per cent were either unsure or haven’t heard of him.

A Pennsylvania Republican strategist, Joshua Novotney, told Politico that Vance “was not chosen to get a leg-up in some area, he was chosen as someone who Trump trusted and wanted to serve with.”

Appearing on Fox & Friends on Thursday morning, Trump was asked if he was still “100 per cent behind JD Vance” after Harris’s rise to the top of the Democratic ticket.

“He’s fantastic, it wouldn’t have mattered, and I thought she was probably going to happen anyway because I knew there was a palace coup going on,” Trump said.

He added that Vance, a former venture capitalist, is “essentially for the worker.”

“He’s doing a great job and he’s been very well received,” Trump said.

Trump spokesman Steven Cheung previously told The Independent: “President Trump is thrilled with the choice he made with Senator Vance, and they are the perfect team to take back the White House. Meanwhile, Democrats are in complete disarray after their coup that forcibly removed Biden from the campaign, proving they are the real threats to democracy.”