Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is unaccustomed to not being the center of the vast media industrial attention complex, and rightly so.
Trump has dominated the news cycle — from his upset 2016 presidential election to his myriad criminal indictments to his current campaign (with a pandemic, two impeachments, and an insurrection in between) — like no politician in recent memory.
On the day of Trump’s third arraignment in four months, Fox’s Dana Perino says the Justice Department “is allowing the Trump team to absolutely dominate the news cycles.” pic.twitter.com/F1Mf0uTchF
— The Recount (@therecount) August 3, 2023
Yet the past two weeks have seen Trump given a run for his attention-economy money not just by the new presumptive Democratic nominee for president Kamala Harris, but also by his own choice for Vice President, Senator J.D. Vance.
In Harris’s case, she’s experiencing a honeymoon surge delivered by the extraordinary set of circumstances surrounding her elevation after incumbent President Joe Biden decided to end his reelection bid.
But Vance’s case is less honeymoon than, as some pundits believe, grounds for divorce. Vance’s post-Republican National Convention approval ratings are so calamitous that even Trump’s much-talked-about dangerous sharks and submerged batteries aren’t as far under water as Vance.
Democrats are widely sharing videos of Vance in the not-so-distant past condemning Harris as part of a group of “childless cat ladies” with too much influence and, being childless, too little stake in the country’s future — as Vance sees it.
JD Vance claims childless women are what’s wrong with the world today (and gay men.) Good luck getting votes a**hole. And Tucker Carlson looks like he was taking a crap. pic.twitter.com/Oyw57poFT0
— Frank Giugliano (@f_giugliano) July 24, 2024
Vance has also said — see video below — that people without children should be a sort of second-class citizen and pay a higher tax rate at that — an income redistribution scheme that sounds decidedly un-Republican, some say. “When you go to the polls as a parent you should have more power,” Vance asserts.
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) points out sarcastically in response that he will stick up for “childless” Republican Senators Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott and that he will fight to protect their rights from usurpers like Vance.
I don’t get it. Why doesn’t JD Vance want childless men like @LindseyGrahamSC and @SenatorTimScott to have the same rights as me? I’m for Lindsey and Tim! https://t.co/ngCiyKjKQn
— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) July 25, 2024