There is a character assassination of Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance underway. He is a threat to the Democrats because he understands and is attractive to the working class voters of the swing state Rust Belt – including Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin – in a way Kamala Harris’ San Francisco liberalism is not.
This, in a nutshell, is why the Democrats and their media allies are on an all-out campaign to destroy him.
Media Turns on Vance
Last week, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who is auditioning to get on the Harris ticket, openly called J.D. Vance a “phony and fake,” suggesting he has overstated his connection to hillbilly culture. “I mean, he claims to be from eastern Kentucky, tries to write a book about it to profit off our people, and then he calls us ‘lazy,'” Beshear claimed. “And he called them lazy, acting like he understands our culture and he’s one of us. He’s not.”
What Beshear said is a lie, and it’s pretty rich coming from a guy whose daddy paved his way into Kentucky legal circles and who, unlike J.D., is not self-made and did not grow up in an abusive, fatherless household with Pepsi in his baby bottle. But I guess he knows more about the working class and their troubles than J.D., whose mother is a recovering heroin addict.
In the wake of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, the Democrats and the media may feel a tinge wary about immediately continuing their incendiary messaging about him being a racist, sexist pig Hitler (not all of them – The Lincoln Project released an ad comparing Trump to Hitler within 48 hours of the shooting – but some).
Who better to turn on than the young, attractive, great American story holder like J.D. Vance? Vance, who used to be more of an establishment Republican without much love for the 2016 version of Donald Trump, went through a fairly significant change on MAGA and its leader over the last eight years.
Even yours truly has had a turnaround on Trump, who, you may recall, was not my favorite person (and vice versa) in the lead-up to the 2016 election. What caused my feelings to change? He governed. He implemented policies to, for example, restore due process on college campuses for young men accused of sexual assault. He passed the anti-sex trafficking law protecting women and young girls. He revved up our economy and rolled back regulations. He cracked down on illegal immigration. He struck racist DEI policies from the federal government. He kept us out of new wars and showed strength on the world stage – this, after eight years of an American apologist in the White House.
But this evolution has led much of the media to assert J.D. is an opportunist, a money-grubber, a phony.
Vance ‘Friend’ Speaks
Just last night on CNN, Erin Burnett paraded out a trans person named Sofia Nelson who was one of J.D.’s friends at Yale Law School. This coward – who is angry that J.D. Vance does not support so-called ‘gender affirming care’ for minors – ended their friendship over the issue and then released dozens of their private texts with J.D. to The New York Times. Then, the person goes on CNN to call J.D. “craven.”
Not only did CNN allow this person to mischaracterize J.D. Vance’s position – he is against sex change procedures for minors, not adults – they smeared his wife Usha too by suggesting she is also a whore for the mighty dollar.
I can relate to J.D.’s reversal on Trump, and I can also relate to his change of heart on the trans issue. I think this person is despicable for attacking their old friend publicly. J.D. went to visit this person after their gender surgery. He showed kindness and love throughout. But because he doesn’t want these barbaric procedures being performed on children, he’s evil? Come on. And shame on CNN for offering no pushback.
As our audience well knows, I too used to think the kindest route was to support kids who say they are trans however possible. I now see this issue so differently. We are hacking up children’s bodies, we are ending their fertility, and we are ruining their chance at a healthy sex life all in the name of not offending the radical trans activists. It is morally unforgivable.
This is the Democrats’ policy and it is harshly anti-woman. Women and young girls are being forced to share locker rooms and bathrooms and showers with men showing off their penises, not to mention share their prison cells with serial male rapists. They are forced to compete against men in sports in which teenagers are suffering injury and permanent nerve damage. How is any of that pro-women?
The GOP vs. The Media
But the Democrats want you to believe the real problem is J.D. Vance’s view that childless leftist politicians don’t have the same kind of skin in the game that pro-family politicians with kids do.
Now even some Republicans are suggesting that maybe Trump should dump Vance over this. The WSJ just did a podcast on this very subject. Surprise, surprise! They’re owned by Rupert Murdoch, who wanted Doug Burgum as the VP nominee. That position is patently absurd and ignores the GOP’s long history with the media.
The problem with J.D. Vance is not his comments about women, and the solution to his problems with the press is not finding a ‘better,’ ‘more moderate’ nominee. The GOP has tried that. If you do not think the press would be doing this exact thing to Doug Bergum or Glenn Youngkin or Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley, you haven’t been paying attention.
They tried to paint John McCain as a racist for weeks after he released an ad in 2008 comparing Barack Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears – a celebrity, not a serious person. Ezra Klein called the ad “crypto-racist.” Bill Press said it was “deliberately racist.” Liberal blogger John Marshall claimed McCain portrayed Obama as a “caricature of an uppity black man.” Don Lemon said McCain “incited hate.” (Hat tip to Joe Concha, by the way, for these reminders.)
John McCain, a man who adopted a three-month-old Bangladeshi girl from an orphanage, is a racist. Sure. It’s no surprise though. According to Pew Research Center, the unfavorable articles about John McCain outweighed the favorable by a nearly four to one margin. Less than 14 percent of his press was positive. As for Obama? 71 percent of coverage was positive or at least mixed.
How about Mitt Romney in 2012? They practically made the man into a Harvey Weinstein after an innocent comment at a town hall about wanting to hire more female employees and reviewing “binders full of women” to make sure he found them. You would have thought he said he liked to grab women by the p-word. They also played the race card with Romney, arguing his push for welfare reform – akin to what, ahem, Bill Clinton pushed through – was racist. And on and on it went.
The target here is not J.D. Vance, just as it wasn’t Mitt Romney or John McCain. It is any Republican up against a Democrat, especially in a presidential race. It doesn’t matter the man; it only matters the party. They will take perfectly benign comments and make them truly terrible. There is no avoiding this. So, stop pretending that there is.
A Word on Reversals
Finally, a word on reversals. J.D. Vance is accused of having changed his mind on Trump, and gender procedures, and even cops (his ex-trans friend says he said he hated police but now he praises them from the stump). Reversals are absolutely fair game for a campaign. But that rule must apply to both sides.
In the course of hours, Kamala Harris has reversed herself on no less than four major policy positions:
- She wanted to ban fracking, but now says she doesn’t.
- She wanted to take away private health insurance, but now says she doesn’t.
- She wanted to institute a mandatory gun buy-back program in connection with an assault weapons ban, but now says the buy-back program is a no-go.
- And she backed Biden’s hands-off approach to the border until days ago when she said she now supports more funding for enforcement.
How did the press respond? By highlighting her old positions and calling her a flip-flopper, political opportunist? Guess again. Here’s Politico: “Harris campaign pledges she won’t ban fracking after Trump accusation.”
Trump accusation?! How about, ‘After she said repeatedly that she would, on camera and elsewhere’?! The body of the piece actually says the Harris campaign is now pledging not to ban fracking, “rejecting what it called ‘false’ accusations by Donald Trump that she would if elected president.”
You know, it’s a he-said, she-said, instead of: This was absolutely her position and there’s zero doubt about it. What a fail, Politico. You should be ashamed.
The Takeaway
The bottom line is Republicans are always up against a dishonest media that loathes them. They were in 2008 and in 2012 with moderate, across-the-aisle kind of nominees like McCain and Romney, and they are in 2024 with Trump and Vance.
The solution is not to reassess the nominees. The solution is to fight fire with fire. Stay on offense. Call out the B.S. and, as Donald Trump said two weeks ago with blood dripping down his face after being shot by an assassin, “Fight. Fight. Fight.”
You can check out Megyn’s full analysis by tuning in to episode 851 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.