Former President Donald Trump's campaign team failing to thoroughly vet Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) ahead of his selection as Trump's running mate caught the former president off guard, according to a new report.
On Saturday, the New York Times reported that while Trump was hoping to "ease Mr. Vance into the spotlight" following his nomination, the flurry of negative news reports about the Ohio senator's comments denigrating women necessitated a new media strategy. The Times' Michael C. Bender wrote that the first tidal wave of bad coverage surrounding Vance prompted Trump to wonder "just how many hits his new running mate could absorb."
"The volume and velocity of attacks from Democrats stunned even Mr. Trump," Bender wrote. "He was unaware of the most incendiary remarks that opponents were rapidly unearthing from Mr. Vance’s past, and the former president told allies that he was troubled by the idea that more comments would come to light as Democrats savaged his heir apparent as weird and anti-women."
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In just the first week after he officially accepted the 2024 vice presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, President Joe Biden announced he was dropping out of the race and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris. And with a woman at the top of the Democratic ticket, Vance was soon thrust into the spotlight over his remarks in interviews and podcasts about women over the years.
The Ohio Republican had to explain a 2021 interview in which he said "childless cat ladies" were forcing a progressive agenda on Americans, though he notably doubled down and apologized only to cats. And after separate interview in which he called for a "federal response" to women from states where abortion was banned to seek the procedure out of state, Harris issued a press release calling Vance a "creep."
"JD Vance's obsession with controlling women's most personal health care decisions, from voting against protecting access to IVF, to advocating for tracking women's menstrual cycles, to calling for a national abortion ban to bar women from traveling to access the care they need, isn't just bad policy - it's creepy, it's unacceptable, and voters won't stand for it," she said.
However, Trump has now reportedly embraced his 40 year-old running mate even more despite polls showing that he's the least popular Republican vice presidential nominee since former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin in 2008. The Times reported that Vance's "execution exceeded [Trump's] expectations after the former president encouraged his running mate to fight hard against the flurry of negative coverage. The ex-president even reportedly compared himself to former Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi, who boasted about his ability to recruit and develop talented players.
READ MORE: 'Obsession with controlling women': Harris calls JD Vance a 'creep' in scathing statement
Outside of Trump's own personal feelings, Vance has had difficulty broadening the appeal of the GOP ticket to undecided voters. An August NPR/Marist poll found that while the Ohio senator had improved his favorability among low-income voters and uneducated voters, he was significantly underwater with college graduates and with independent women.
Anti-Trump Republican activist Bill Kristol told the Times that Trump's decision to elevate Vance demonstrated that he was an elderly man set in his ways "who doesn't understand the world has changed."
"Vance has gone out of his way to adopt a set of views from an ideological, right-wing milieu on things like child-rearing and how women should more or less stay home," Kristol said. "That is harder to understand from someone who is 40."
Click here to read the Times' report in full (subscription required).
