‘Bizarre beliefs’ and ‘creepy friends’: Choosing JD Vance could be a costly mistake for Trump

While MAGA-loving Republicans celebrated Trump’s pick for running mate this week, so did Democrats. Andrew Feinberg reports on why the opposition believes Vance is such an easy target for their upcoming campaigns

Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump and Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance embrace on Day 2 of the Republican National Convention (RNC), at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (REUTERS)

When Donald Trump took to Truth Social to announce that he was selecting Ohio senator JD Vance to be his running-mate, the rightmost reaches of the Republican Party feted Vance as a masterful pick who would serve as a bridge to the next generation of the populist MAGA movement.

But in the background, another, much more unexpected group of people were also cheering: Democrats.

According to sources within the Democratic National Committee, the Biden-Harris re-election campaign, and outside groups supporting the Democratic ticket against Trump and Vance, the selection of the 38-year-old former venture capitalist is being greeted with jubilation and relief.

This is because Trump’s two other reported finalists for the job, North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum and Florida Senator Marco Rubio, each boasted positive qualities that could have shored up the former president’s known weaknesses. Vance, on the other hand, could end up being a big, showy misstep.

Doug Burgum’s record as a two-term governor would have provided Trump-doubting Republicans and political independents with a steady hand who could step in, were the worst to happen to Trump. He also could have brought solid conservative bona fides to the ticket along the same lines as the man who Trump ran with in his first two presidential races, former Vice President Mike Pence.

A former Republican strategist who no longer works with GOP candidates described Trump’s choice as shocking, especially after the assassination attempt on the ex-president.

They said: “You come within inches of having your head turned inside-out, and two days later the guy you pick for the job of being alive in the event you are dead is the millennial freshman who has exactly one election and two years in the Senate under his belt? Normal people are going to think that’s idiotic.”

The former strategist added that Trump, through a combination of sheer luck and better advisers, had run a relatively flawless campaign — right up to the moment he picked Vance. Choosing Vance, they said, was “a colossal and unnecessary f**k-up” because it undermines Trump’s central thesis for why he should be put back in the White House: his judgment.

But the glee anti-Trump forces are feeling after Vance became Trump’s running-mate isn’t only from how the pick reflects on the ex-president.

Democrats and Democratic-aligned groups are salivating over the opening provided by Trump’s tapping the Buckeye State senator as his number-two, citing what they described to The Independent as a smorgasbord of opposition research that will be used to make Vance politically toxic to persuadable swing voters within a matter of weeks.

Democrats pounced on the chance early Tuesday with a series of billboards posted in the Milwaukee area in which they called out Vance’s links to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.

The billboards show Trump and Vance together with the words “Trump-Vance” and “Project 2025” printed between them.

Different versions of the signs have different messages below the “Project 2025” lettering, but each describes a consequence of implementing the controversial plan. One reads: “Ban abortion, punish women” while another quotes Trump’s pledge to be a dictator on “day one” of his second term. Still others say Trump and Vance will “terminate the [Affordable Care Act]” and “gut social security” or enact “tax breaks for billionaires” and “higher costs for you.”

In a statement, DNC Rapid Response Director Alex Floyd said Vance is joining Trump in “running on an extreme Project 2025 agenda – and the American people deserve to know that they’re planning to rip away their health care, gut Social Security, strip their reproductive freedoms, and shill for big corporations on the backs of working families.”

“If Trump were trying to distance himself from Project 2025, then he probably shouldn’t have chosen as his running mate the man who just days ago said that the extreme blueprint is full of ‘good ideas.’ The more the American people learn about Trump and Vance and their terrifying Project 2025 agenda, the clearer the choice will be to choose President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’ vision that protects our basic freedoms, come November,” he added.

The Independent has learned that the billboards are part of what will be a unified DNC-Biden campaign effort to attack Vance on policy grounds.

The theory behind these attacks is that Trump and Vance’s agenda is highly unpopular with voters and seen as extreme and dangerous, but only once voters are educated about the details.

In an era when personalities are often more important than policies to a critical mass of voters, operatives more attuned to the Vance’s personal attributes are also licking their lips at a chance to sink their teeth into what they see as an ample-sized target.

The thinking from some of these outside groups is that Vance, although undoubtedly accomplished, is also fundamentally unlikeable.

One person involved in an anti-Trump political committee told The Independent that voters can expect to see significant opposition research deployed against Vance to paint him as “too damn weird.”

Vance, they said, will be an easy target for caricature as an out-of-touch, awkward “fleece vest tech bro” with “bizarre beliefs” and “creepy friends”. The latter category includes Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk and right-wing venture capitalists Peter Thiel and David Sacks.

They also pointed to the Ohioan’s links to even more fringe figures such as Curtis Yarvin, a literal monarchist who believes the American system of government should be replaced by what Yarvin has described in his writings as “a national CEO or what’s called a dictator.”

“Vance was essentially created in a lab by Peter Thiel,” the person said, referring to the PayPal co-founder and major Republican donor who has funded numerous “new right” political candidates.

“Trump will push him as this all-American ex-Marine who has lived the American dream, but when we’re done he’s going to be known as a monarchist who has really strange ideas about women.”