LAS VEGAS — Donald Trump’s big bet on Sen. J.D. Vance faces a major test out West this week, starting Tuesday afternoon, about 15 miles from the Las Vegas Strip.
Vance, an Ohio Republican who has had a tumultuous campaign as Trump’s running mate, is scheduled to kick off his campaign with a speech at a high school in Henderson.
From there, Vance will attend an event in Reno before appearing at a fundraising luncheon near Fresno, Calif., on Wednesday. Later that day, he will hold a rally at Arizona Christian University near Phoenix. On Thursday morning, he is scheduled to visit the U.S.-Mexico border in Cochise County, Arizona, where he is likely to attack Vice President Kamala Harris’ record on immigration.
For Vance, it’s a chance to quickly move on from his debut, which came under fresh criticism last week over some provocative past comments, including his thoughts on the societal value of women who don’t have children – or, in his words, “childless cat ladies.”
Those and other old remarks, many of which are new to a broad national audience, have become the rough introduction that Harris, the de facto Democratic presidential nominee, is eager to use. Harris and her allies have rushed to define Vance as a “nutcase” before the Trump campaign can define him on its own terms. Some of Vance’s fellow Republicans and leaders on the party’s right wing have expressed concern.
“Typically after the convention, the vice presidential candidate crisscrosses the country introducing themselves and trying to court swing votes,” Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist and former Trump State Department official, told NBC News. “Now J.D. Vance is trying to clear his name and win over the Republican Party. It’s a very strange dynamic.”
“I think that’s the challenge now – getting Republicans to reassure them that he was the right choice before they try to expand their voting base,” Bartlett added.
Sources close to the Trump campaign expressed optimism that the worst was over for Vance and that things actually started to turn around late last week. They pointed in particular to Vance’s speech at a joint rally with Trump in St. Cloud, Minnesota, on Saturday, where a video clip of his attack on Harris was widely circulated among prominent right-wing figures on social media. The speech as a whole was seen as a dark passage about Vance’s role in the campaign.
“He’s a policy attack dog against Kamala Harris,” added the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss insider thinking. “That’s basically JD’s game plan going forward.”
Vance’s performance in St. Cloud was noticeably more disciplined and scripted than his first solo campaign stint as Trump’s running mate earlier this week.
At the rally, Vance made a side note about his love for Diet Mountain Dew.
“I’m sure they’ll call it racist,” he joked impromptu, which was well received by friendly audiences in his childhood town of Middletown, Ohio, but ridiculed by Democrats.
On Saturday, Vance continued to target Harris, calling her the “most radical liberal” senator during his pre-election years. (GovTrack.us, which tracks federal legislation, recently retracted its rating of Harris as the most liberal senator in 2019, ranking her second in both 2019 and 2020, behind Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).)
“She’s a co-sponsor of the Green New Scum,” Vance said, referring to the Green New Deal climate bill co-sponsored by Harris and other Democratic senators in 2019. “And she supports all of the insane environmental policies that will put American workers out of work, send gas prices soaring, and push Americans deeper into poverty. She is 100% responsible for the inflationary disaster that is destroying American families.”
Vance also linked Harris to President Joe Biden, who endorsed her after deciding last week not to seek reelection. He stressed that Harris has been asked to lead the administration’s efforts to address the causes of migration from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
“As America’s border secretary — and the media has all reported that she was border secretary — Kamala Harris is directly responsible for the worst border crisis in the history of this country,” Vance said.
Meanwhile, he and his allies have launched a counterattack against the “strange” attacks.
“‘J.D. Vance is weird,'” Vance wrote on X on Sunday, alongside a video clip of Harris using the pronouns “she,” “her” and “hers” while introducing herself at a CNN town hall during the last presidential campaign.
Right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro, who said on a podcast a few days ago that he doubted Trump would choose Vance if he could go back two weeks in time, has once again come out in support.
“Democrats and Republicans use two different definitions of ‘weird’ to attack their opponents,” Shapiro wrote on X. “Democrats say JD Vance is weird because he cares about declining birth rates as a social issue. Republicans say Kamala Harris is weird because, y’know, she’s weird.”
Trump also defended Vance. In a Fox News interview on Monday, Trump accused Democrats of “spinning things the other way” by drawing attention to Vance’s “childfree cat lady” comments from 2021. At the time, Vance was running for Senate and specifically criticized Harris, a stepmother to his two children, and other Democrats for not having children.
“First of all, he has tremendous support from a certain group of people: people who love family,” Trump said. “He’s not against anything, he loves family. Family is very important to him.”
