J.D. Vance: VP Pick Signals the Radicalization and Cynicism Gripping the GOP
The key things to know about Trump’s VP pick
Check out a press call with Congresswoman Veronica Escobar (D-Texas), and representatives from America’s Voice, the Niskanen Center, Vera Action, and the American Civil Liberties Union, reacting to the VP pick and the second day of the RNC
Donald Trump’s choice of J.D. Vance is a signal that there will not be a change in tone after the shooting incident on July 13, 2024.
The junior Senator from Ohio had one of the most combative reactions. He falsely, but directly, blamed Biden for the shooting without any evidence or consideration for the depravity of his words.
In fact, Vance has spent the last several years echoing the white nationalist rhetoric that inspired multiple deadly domestic terrorists in Pittsburgh, El Paso, and Buffalo. His pick reveals the ongoing radicalization gripping the GOP as the one-time severe skeptic of Trump has turned into a sycophant willing to embrace the blood and soil nationalism, the dehumanizing of immigrants as conspiratorial villains, and treating the nation as if violence and authoritarianism are the only cure.
Vance’s cynical approach to the opioid crisis is indicative of the divide and distract politics that is the central theme of the GOP campaigns, deploying racism strategically without improving the lives of working people.
The Top Three Things to Know About Vance
For years, J.D. Vance has amplified the white nationalist great replacement conspiracy theory, echoing deadly domestic terrorists describing non-white migrants as an invading force.
J.D. Vance supports a mass deportation agenda that seeks to rip apart American families, deport Dreamers, and create massive show-me-your-papers forces to fill detention camps.
He is a complete fraud on the opioid crisis. Vance is closely tied to a shadowy group that sought to cover up big pharma’s role in the opioid crisis. J.D. Vance prefers to issue lies about immigrants rather than trying to solve the opioid crisis.
Who is J.D. Vance
Vance is a former venture capitalist with a Peter Thiel firm and gained national prominence thanks to his “Hillbilly Elegy” book, which he used as a launching pad for a successful run for Ohio Senate in 2022. In 2016, Vance gained notoriety for being a vocal Trump critic – including privately wondering if Trump would be “America’s Hitler” and calling the former president “reprehensible” in a now-deleted tweet – but did a hard about-face as he sought to bear hug the radical Trump agenda to advance his political career.
Check out our analysis of Vance in his 2022 Senate campaign.
White Nationalism
In an attempt to burnish his radical-right credentials after years of being a public face opposing Trump, Vance actively courted extreme figures immensely popular with the Republican base, including Tucker Carlson, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Turning Points USA founder Charlie Kirk and of course, Trump himself, all of whom loudly peddle racist, xenophobic, and election lies.
Vance has quickly sounded like those he surrounded himself with, making a racist conspiracy theory about a non-existent immigrant “invasion” a core part of his primary campaign. This is the same racist conspiracy theory, it should be noted, that inspired the mass murders who attacked shoppers at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas in 2019 and just across the Ohio state line at a Pittsburgh synagogue, Pennsylvania, in 2018.
Vance first suggested military action to halt refugees last September, after Haitians fleeing back-to-back devastating natural disasters and the assassination of their Prime Minister, formed a temporary refugee encampment in Del Rio, Texas, as they tried to apply for asylum. Vance tweeted “Send in the Marines,” in response to a short video of the refugees. In December 2021, Vance invoked the racist conspiracy theory about a migrant “invasion” in response to reports of Customs and Border Patrol encountering a couple of thousand unauthorized migrants, most of whom were likely swiftly deported by the Biden administration. That December, Vance made the audacious claim that “never before has American leadership actively promoted the invasion of the country.”
However, Vance was quick to dismiss the real invasion of Russia into Ukraine. In February, during an episode of Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, Vance made the offensive comparison between the migrants at the southern border and Russian troops then massing at the Ukrainian border. “I gotta be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another,” Vance said, claiming that migration was a much more concern problem. Vance went on to cite the southern border and “demographic transformation in this country,” as the greater of mutually exclusive threats to America.
Vance has been amplifying the white nationalist replacement conspiracy theory, for the last several years see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Most recently, Vance also shared a stage at the National Conservative conference with Paul Gottfried, among a long list of concerning activities is the mentor of white nationalist Richard Spencer helping to coin the term “Alt-Right.”
At that conference, Vance told the audience that the “real threat to democracy is not Donald Trump” instead, he argued that the real threat is that “voters keep on voting for less immigration and our politicians keep on rewarding us with more, that is the threat to American democracy.” He went on to argue that immigration “has made our societies poorer, less safe, less prosperous, and less advanced.”
This is the same conference where Tom Homan promised, “Trump comes back in January, I’ll be on his heels coming back, and I will run the biggest deportation force this country has ever seen … They ain’t seen shit yet. Wait until 2025.”
Mass Deportation
Vance is a proponent of Trump's mass deportation agenda, saying in a recent funding appeal that “we need to deport every single person who invaded our country illegally.” In his call for a mass purge of millions from the nation, Vance also employed the same white nationalist “invasion” rhetoric tied to numerous mass terror attacks in multiple cities across the U.S.
Trump and Vance’s mass deportation agenda is a top priority, featuring prominently in the recently approved Party platform. Vance now needs to answer for the details of what is, for all intents and purposes a mass family separation plan.
They are promising to rip apart American families in mixed-status homes, leaving millions of US citizen children without a parent and leaving many families with empty chairs around the dinner table. Their plan is to round up the second-grade teacher with DACA, the home healthcare aide with Temporary Protected Status, and the farmworker keeping food in the grocery store and inflation down. They want to go after the 80% of the undocumented population who have called the US home for over a decade. The GOP’s plan is not just about new arrivals but the mass family separation of established American families in our communities. Trump promises to turn to the military and deputize the state and local police into his show-me-your-papers force tasked with rounding up millions for mass detention camps. That is not hyperbole. This is the plan they are campaigning on.
The Republican plan to separate American families and deport millions will devastate the economy. It will create job loss, increase inflation, and wreak havoc on key industries, including construction, healthcare, and agriculture. None of this is for the real benefit of American families but at their great expense. Mass family separation will cost American jobs. Mass family separation will not make neighborhoods safer. Mass family separation will undermine the short and long-term prosperity of the nation.
Opioids
While Vance positioned himself as a “savior of the Rust Belt,” he turned the opioid epidemic “wrenchingly” described in his “Hillbilly Elegy” memoir into a political issue by falsely blaming challenges around this crisis on immigrants at the southern border and President Biden.
In an interview with Roger Stone, Vance suggested that President Joe Biden is intentionally allowing fentanyl to enter the U.S. through the southern border in order to kill off MAGA voters. “If you wanted to kill a bunch of MAGA voters in the middle of the heartland, how better than to target them and their kids with this deadly fentanyl?” Vance then said, “It’s like Joe Biden wants to punish the people who didn’t vote for him and opening up the floodgates to the border is one way to do it.” The New York Times reported that Vance made the remarks “with a straight face but no evidence,” citing the fact that “fentanyl deaths did rise sharply in 2021, but they rose sharply in 2020 as well.”
However, a closer look at the facts around his so-called anti-drug charity and Big Pharma ties revealed the despicable and shallow nature of his attacks. In the midst of his U.S. Senate run, an investigation by the Associated Press revealed that Vance’s non-profit, Our Ohio Renewal’s “most notable accomplishment — sending an addiction specialist to Ohio’s Appalachian region for a yearlong residency — was tainted by ties among the doctor, the institute that employed her and Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin.”
This included a total of $800,000 in donations from Purdue to a think-tank where the specialist, Dr. Sally Satel, served as a senior fellow and that “sometimes cited Purdue-funded studies and doctors,” the AP said. “Longtime Ohio political observer Herb Asher cast the charity’s shortcomings, including Satel’s links to Big Pharma, as a ‘betrayal.’”
Comparing Trump to Hitler
In 2016, in a leaked private chat speculated that his now-running mate was ”America’s Hitler.” Fast forward, after Trump was confronted with the fact that he was echoing Hitler with his claims that immigrants were “poisoning the blood” of the nation, J.D. Vance defended the comments. Citing the fentanyl disinformation he has trafficked, he repeated the Hitler echo.
In response to Trump’s “poisoning the blood” comment: “He [Trump] said illegal immigrants were poisoning the blood of this country, which is objectively and obviously true to anybody who looks at the statistics about fentanyl overdoses,” Vance told The Hill in December of 2023.
Nativist Rhetoric
Vance also has an extensive, if recent history, in spreading conspiratorial and dehumanizing nativist disinformation. He helped push bigoted attacks on Chinese immigrants via a video. Several Republicans jumped on the video, retweeting it to push bigoted political attacks, like Vance who wrote, “Biden is releasing illegal aliens from China with little more than a piece of paper promising they’ll eventually appear in court. Will they spy on Americans? Collect intelligence on our military installations?”
It is the Senator’s instincts to talk first and check facts later and to see every issue as an opportunity to divide Americans that is concerning, which also may be precisely why he was chosen as Trump's running mate.