Experts say Trump campaign is 'doomed' if Vance doesn’t fix his 'extremely off-putting' tone

06 August 2024

Former President Donald Trump may have an albatross around his neck preventing him from reaching a core bloc of voters in the form of his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio).

In a recent interview with Fox News, journalist Jessica Reed Kraus — who runs the popular House Inhabit Substack newsletter — said that the Ohio senator's years-long history of making derogatory remarks about women and childless Americans could come back to haunt both him and former President Donald Trump when it comes to courting undecided women voters. Kraus added that while it's not too late for Vance to reclaim the narrative, he has nonetheless caused significant damage to the campaign's efforts to broaden its appeal.

"JD's phrasing is extremely off-putting to undecided women voters," she said. "He needs to fix his delivery to relay the messaging, or the Trump-Vance brand is doomed."

Another expert told the network that Vance's past remarks — like insisting that "childless cat ladies" are pushing a progressive agenda on Americans — will backfire with women voters. According to Rachel Dean Wilson, who is the managing director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy and a former advisor to Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona), Vance's rhetoric could be a boon to America's "adversaries" overseas.

"Taking a step back from the campaign tit-for-tat, attempting to divide women along the lines of mothers vs. non-mothers is poisonous to our communities and political discourse," Wilson said. "I would encourage women of all political stripes to resist the tribalism these attack lines encourage on both sides. While this is an undoubtedly domestic conversation, I always like to remind people that deep domestic division and polarization benefits our adversaries abroad and weakens the United States on the world stage."

Vance has spent his first two weeks on the Republican ticket doing damage control amid the ongoing fallout over his past statements. His wife, Usha, described the Hillbilly Elegy author's "childless cat ladies" remark as a "quip in service of making a point that he wanted to make that was substantive."

"I just wish sometimes that people would talk about those things and that we would spend a lot less time just sort of going through this three-word phrase or that three-word phrase," she said.

The Ohio senator has made numerous comments denigrating childless women. In one 2022 interview with an Australian podcaster, Vance suggested that billionaire Democratic donor George Soros would eventually pay for 747 jets to fly predominantly Black women to California to obtain abortions in the event Roe v. Wade was overturned (which the Supreme Court did in June of that year).

Vance's rhetoric isn't just damaging to women, independents or Democratic-leaning voters. Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy — who backed Trump in 2015, interviewed him at the White House in 2020 and endorsed his 2024 campaign — called the 2024 GOP vice presidential nominee's past proposal to tax childless Americans at a higher rate "f—ing idiotic."

"You want me to pay more taxes to take care of other people's kids? We sure this dude is a Republican? Sounds like a moron," Portnoy tweeted in July. "If you can't afford a big family don't have a ton of kids."

Click here to read Fox News' report in its entirety.

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