Tipsheet

JD Vance Continues to Push Back Against the 'Weird' Label

Rebecca Downs
Rebecca Downs  |  July 31, 2024 3:45 PM

Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) seems to be pretty clear-eyed about what to expect now that he's in the spotlight as former and potentially future President Donald Trump's running mate. This includes the bizarre effort to label Vance as "weird," a term Vice President Kamala Harris has used. Such a label came up during Vance's Tuesday interview with NBC, though he doesn't seem to be bothered by it.

The interview write-up began by mentioning:

RENO, Nev. — Sen. JD Vance knows he has had a rocky rollout as Donald Trump’s running mate, but he doesn’t believe he has disappointed the former president.

“No,” Vance, R-Ohio, said in an interview aboard his campaign plane en route to a rally here Tuesday. “I mean, I knew that when I came out of the gate there was going to be a couple of days of positive media coverage and then immediately they would go and attack me over everything that I had ever said in my life.”

Vance has faced relentless criticism from allies of Vice President Kamala Harris, the de facto Democratic presidential nominee, for his 2021 comments questioning the societal value of women who don’t have children and referring to them as “childless cat ladies.” Harris’ campaign over the last week has tried to brand Vance and his political point of view as “weird.” Trump has stood by Vance.

“The price of entry of being on the national ticket and giving me an opportunity to govern is you have to ... take the shots, and so I sort of expected it,” Vance said. “I think that, frankly, the people who’ve made a lot of money and acquired a lot of power screwing the country up are not going to go easily.”

That Vance mentioned he "sort of expected it" as "the price of entry of being on the national ticket" is particularly key. That he added, "I think that, frankly, the people who’ve made a lot of money and acquired a lot of power screwing the country up are not going to go easily," is another good way for him to have turned the narrative around.

Vance also told Fox News in an interview that aired on Sunday that it doesn't hurt his feelings to be described in such a way. 

It's not just Vance, though, who has been the target of this "weird" label from Democrats. On Tuesday night, as we covered, the NV Dems account referred to both Vance and Sam Brown as "just plain weird" for using a campaign plane. Brown is the Republican nominee for the Senate seat in Nevada. He's also a wounded veteran and a Purple Heart recipient.

Trump himself has started using the "weird" label to describe Vice President Kamala Harris as well, as he did during his interview with Fox News' Laura Ingraham. 

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The Democrats look to be leaning into this "just plain weird" label, as Ingraham brought up, referencing a TIME magazine story. 

As part of his response to this "just plain weird" narrative, Trump asked, "You know who's plain weird? She's plain weird. She's a weird person. Look at her past. Look at what she does. And look at what she used to say about herself, and I won't get into it, what she used to say and who she was, compared to what she said starting at about 2016." Trump also pointed out that "she became a totally different person, only for political reasons."