Donald Trump may be regretting his choice of running mate and wondering, “Why did I pick this guy?” according to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. Over the past few weeks since Trump announced his decision, the narrative that Sen. J.D. Vance is “weird” has gained traction, and Schumer speculated that this could prompt the former president to consider replacing him.
“Every day it turns out that Vance has done something more extreme, more bizarre, more volatile,” Schumer said. “And Vance seems to be more bizarre and more volatile than President Trump, and I bet President Trump is sitting there scratching his head, wondering, ‘Why did I pick this guy?’”
“Choice may be one of the best things,” the Democratic senator added. [Trump] “We did it for the Democrats, after all.”
It's true that the news cycle around Vance has been bizarre, and Democrats as well as anti-Trump celebrities have seized on the message.
For example, in a 2021 interview with Tucker Carlson, Vance said that America is being influenced by “a bunch of cat ladies who don’t have kids, who are miserable with their lives and the choices they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.” He added, “Look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Ocasio-Cortez—the entire future of the Democrats is being controlled by people who don’t have kids.”
Harris has adopted children with her husband, Rep. Douglas Emhoff. Later in 2021, Buttigieg and Chasen welcomed twins, a daughter and a son.
Jennifer Aniston responded to Vance, writing on Instagram: “I honestly can't believe this is coming from a potential Vice President of the United States. All I can say is… Mr. Vance, I pray that your daughter is lucky enough to have her own children one day.”
“If you wanted to put it in misogynistic terms, you'd get it, you're being hysterical,” comedian Chelsea Handler joked.
In another bizarre move, Vance has previously proposed the bizarre idea of giving all children in America the right to vote and handing “control of those votes to the parents of those children.” He has also floated the idea of a “federal response” to prevent women in red states like his own Ohio from traveling to get an abortion after Roe v. Wade. “I’m very sympathetic to that idea,” Vance said. [idea]“He said. In 2022, Vance said he “would like to make abortion illegal nationwide.”
Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign played into Vance’s bizarre narrative by calling him “creepy” in a statement Friday headlined: “J.D. Vance is a creep (Want to Ban Abortion Nationwide).” In an email sent Friday, the Harris campaign wrote, “J.D. Vance is a creep. Voters know it — Vance is the most unpopular VP pick in decades.” Also Friday, according to Politico, Harris campaign spokeswoman Serafina Chitica said Vance “has spent all week making headlines with his bizarre, out-of-touch ideas.”
It’s also curious how Vance, who once described himself as “not a Trump supporter,” has become one of his most ardent supporters. In public, Vance has called Trump “a fool” and “reprehensible.” In private, he has reportedly likened him to Adolf Hitler. But Vance sought and received Trump’s endorsement during his 2022 Senate race.
There's also the couch rumor. A viral tweet falsely claimed that Vance wrote in his book, Hillbilly Elegy, About masturbating with a latex glove between two couch cushions. Although this claim has been debunked (Vance didn't write anything like that in the book), the damage had already been done in the form of memes and jokes that continue to spread across the internet.
But will all this lead Trump to abandon his vice presidential nominee before the Ohio vote deadline on August 7? Schumer thinks it’s possible, though it’s worth noting that doing so would likely require Trump to at least implicitly admit that he was wrong — something he rarely does.
“now [Trump] “He has 10 days before the ballot is decided in Ohio,” Schumer said. “He has a choice: Does he keep Vance on the ticket, where he already has a lot of baggage — he’s likely to have more baggage over the weeks because we’re going to hear more about him — or does he pick someone new? What’s his choice?”
