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Fox News host Maria Bartiromo asked Ohio Senator JD Vance about critics who say he's the "wrong pick" to be former President Donald Trump's running mate in the upcoming presidential election on Sunday morning.
Trump, the GOP presidential nominee, announced Vance, a critic turned ally of the former president, as his running mate at the Republican National Convention (RNC) last month in Milwaukee. Reports later emerged that Trump was second-guessing his vice president pick, a claim that Trump and his campaign have denied.
"Some people are saying you were the wrong pick for Trump's running mate. What are you doing about it?" Bartiromo asked Vance during an interview on Sunday Morning Futures.
Vance replied: "All I can do is go out there and prosecute the case against [Vice President] Kamala Harris and remind people that things were more prosperous and peaceful when Trump was president."
He continued: "I recognize that there are a lot of folks, even in the GOP establishment and certainly on the far left who don't like the fact that Donald Trump picked me. I actually take their criticism as a badge of honor. Of course, the media is going to attack the people they fear the most. The media is going to attack the people who can most effectively bring Donald Trump's message to a broader swath of the electorate and I don't come from inside the beltway, Maria."
Vance then went into the story of how he grew up in Middletown, Ohio, which is detailed in his 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy.
"I grew up as a poor kid. I didn't come from a political family or a wealthy family. I worked my way through college through the Marine Corps. and I eventually landed as Donald Trump's running mate. I think that's a story that a lot of normal Americans can empathize with," Vance told Bartiromo. "I'm not shocked that a lot of inside the beltway media types don't like me but their policies are the problem. Of course, they don't like me because we're running to fix what they have broken."
During the interview, Vance also criticized the Biden-Harris administration's handling of the economy and immigration as well as their environmental and energy policies.
Newsweek reached out to a campaign spokesman for Vance via email for comment on Sunday afternoon.
Last month, Trump stood by Vance while appearing for a phone interview on Fox & Friends. During the interview with Fox News' Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt, Brian Kilmeade and Lawrence Jones, Trump called the senator "fantastic" and said "it wouldn't have mattered" if Harris was tapped as the likely Democratic nominee before he announced his running mate.
President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race on July 21 following weeks of interparty fighting among Democrats on whether he should pass the torch to the next generation after his debate fiasco against Trump in late June in Atlanta. Biden also endorsed Harris the day he withdrew from the race.
Trump's communications director, Steven Cheung, meanwhile, denied reports that Trump was regretting his choice of running mate.
"President Trump is thrilled with the choice he made with Senator Vance, and they are the perfect team to take back the White House. And any reporting to the contrary is nothing but ridiculous fake news from either non-existent sources or individuals who have no idea what's going on," Cheung told Newsweek last month. "Meanwhile, Democrats are in complete disarray after their coup that forcibly removed Biden from the campaign, proving they are the real threats to democracy."
Controversy Surrounding Vance
Vance has recently faced some heat for comments he made while running for senator in 2021 about childless women in politics.
Vance told then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Tucker Carlson Tonight: "We're effectively run in this country, via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too."
He added: "And it's just a basic fact, you look at Kamala Harris, [Transportation Secretary] Pete Buttigieg, AOC [Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]. The entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children, and how does it make any sense that we've turned our country over to people who don't really have a direct stake in it?"
In response to the recent backlash Vance has faced, Taylor Van Kirk, a spokesperson for Vance, said in a statement obtained by Newsweek last month, "Once again, the leftwing media have twisted Senator Vance's words and spun up a false narrative about his position on the issues. The Democrats are in complete disarray with the most unpopular Vice President in history as their party's nominee. The only childlessness we should be talking about are the childless parents who lost their kids to the murderous thugs and deadly fentanyl coming across Kamala's southern border."
In 2021, Biden tasked Harris with leading the administration's diplomacy with Central American countries—El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras—to address the "root causes" of migration. However, she never was in charge of border security.
Meanwhile, Vance's older sister, Lindsay Lewis, said in a statement that Newsweek obtained from the senator's press office last month, "JD was raised by some of the strongest women I know and went on to marry an incredibly strong woman in Usha. JD is a testament to the women in his life, and the attacks from the media and Democrats that assume anything otherwise is vile."
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About the writer
Rachel Dobkin is a Newsweek reporter based in New York. Her focus is reporting on politics. Rachel joined Newsweek in ... Read more