GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump takes aim at a lot of targets, and he and his VP pick JD Vance finished their campaign with Trump calling former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi an “evil, sick, crazy b — ” and Vance saying the Democratic candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, was “trash.”
The bashing of women, in a race where a lot of attention has been on reproductive rights, is counterintuitive, perhaps — but then Trump has exercised counterintuitive moves since he entered politics, so it is unsurprising.
The Trump-Vance hostility toward women did manage to change the narrative a little and grab the last pre-election headlines, pushing down the rising story of the Trump campaign insulting Puerto Rico, which a speaker at Trump’s Madison Square Garden event called a “floating island of garbage.”
That insult galvanized fiery support for Harris among the Puerto Rican community, with celebs like Jennifer Lopez and Bad Bunny doubling down against the Republican ticket in the last week of the campaign.
All these insults have also worked to deflect attention from Trump’s alleged disrespect for military service members and career military officers, many of who he calls “stupid” and “dumb.”
But one military combat veteran — whose Harris support has been picked up and shared by popular accounts like Republicans Against Trump — hasn’t forgotten the way Trump has treated the military, even as Trump’s late-campaign insults to women and Puerto Ricans has pushed that story from the top of the news.
On X, an account going by the name Chad Scott (see below), writes: “I’m a 40 year old white man, Husband, Combat Veteran, gun owner, University educated, father of two sons and two daughters. I voted for Trump in 2020. I’m voting for Harris because Trump should be nowhere near the White House or any office for that matter and my vote in 2020 was a mistake.”
The post received blowback, not least from accounts that appear to be bots. The Scott account actually answered the first few comments calling him a “traitor” for his Harris vote, responding that “your candidate is the one that [expletives] on the Constitution.”
He has not yet responded to the question below, which asks for his feelings about fellow veterans who retain loyalty to Trump despite some of his actions.
im curious on how you feel about vets voting for Trump despite his behavior and comments on vets
— #imwithher (@NicksWaffle) November 5, 2024
Democrats have tried to peel off unhappy Republican voters who don’t think Trump is a fit commander-in-chief, featuring hundreds of national security professionals who have backed Harris and warned that a Trump 2.0 would endanger the country. Service members are a key part of this group.
In addition to their arguments about how the military should be respected, Harris and her VP pick Tim Walz break another common stereotype that the GOP has historically used to corral veterans to their side — both Harris and Walz, like the veteran Chad Scott, are proud gun owners.