Photo: Tom Brenner/The Washington Post/Getty Images
By any account, J.D. Vance’s past week was a bad one. Putting aside the viral joke about his (totally invented) sexual union with a couch in Hillbilly Elegy, the Republican pick for vice-president was hammered in the press for his prior comments about “childless cat ladies,” hard-line views on reproductive health, and other nosy opinions about other people’s choices not to have kids. Polls are now suggesting that the Democratic messaging that this man is “weird” may be working. One survey from this week found his approval rating is 14 points underwater.
It was clear that Vance would need to go on the attack this week, defending his current standing from his past self and all the opinions he’s changed over the years. At a stop in Minnesota on Sunday, Vance said that “it doesn’t hurt my feelings” that Democrats are calling him weird. At a rally in Nevada on Tuesday, he even countered with a “wacky” nickname for Kamala Harris. In his tour across America, Vance rose to the level of competence, glad-handing at diners and pushing GOP talking points at swing-state rallies.
There’s just one problem standing in the way of J.D. Vance — and his name is Donald Trump.
At first, the former president defended his vice-presidential nominee, saying on Fox News on Monday that “people that like families” will back J.D. Vance. Vance too said they were on a good footing, telling the website NOTUS that he and Trump “have good relationship and that will keep on going through all the way to November, hopefully past that too.” But then came Trump’s old-school off-the-rails interview on Wednesday at the National Association of Black Journalists conference. Among many revealing comments, Trump said his vice-presidential pick does not actually matter:
When asked if Vance was “ready on day one,” Trump said that “historically the vice-president, in terms of the election, does not have any impact.” He said there is “virtually no impact” except for “two or three days where there’s a lot of commotion” and then “that dies down.” Rarely a scholar of history, Trump noted that Lyndon Johnson’s VP candidate mattered “for political reasons” but that in the modern era it “virtually” has no effect.
Hearing that hard truth could be tough for Vance, coming as it does from a boss he once compared to Hitler. But this was nothing compared to Trump’s bizarre obsession with Harris’s identity as a Black woman. He started it at the National Association of Black Journalists conference. “She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage,” Trump said. “I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black. And now she wants to be known as Black. So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?” As the week wore on, he doubled down.
You might think that Vance, who places a hell of a lot of stock in the importance of parenthood, had found himself in a tricky position here. His boss was saying (at best) that someone whose mother is Indian must pick between racial identities. Vance, of course, is a dad to three kids whose mother is Indian. But no. “I thought it was hysterical,” Vance said at a rally in Arizona on Wednesday. “I think he pointed out the fundamental chameleon-like nature of Kamala Harris.” And then? He started saying she had a “fake southern accent” and that she “grew up in Canada.” (Harris lived in Montreal while her mother was teaching at McGill for about five years.)
Perhaps as a distraction from this extremely inconvenient culture war front, Vance is engaging in another fight over identity. The latest in the conservative movement’s revolt against transgender athletes in sports involves an Algerian boxer named Imane Khelif, who was disqualified last year by the International Boxing Association, but was given the go-ahead to fight in Paris by the International Olympic Committee. Khelif is not transgender but has what is called a disorder of sex development, which results in some women having “XY chromosomes and blood testosterone levels typical of a male,” per Reuters. After Khelif beat her Olympic opponent in 45 seconds, Vance tweeted: “This is where Kamala Harris’s ideas about gender lead: to a grown man pummeling a woman in a boxing match. This is disgusting, and all of our leaders should condemn it.” While Vance was wrong — Khelif is not transgender — he was in line with his running mate, who posted a video of her fight with the caption: “I WILL KEEP MEN OUT OF WOMEN’S SPORTS!”
This post has been updated.
