Not 24 hours after GOP vice-presidential nominee JD Vance returned Vice President Kamala Harris’ phone call welcoming him to the 2024 presidential race, it was business as usual for the campaign to re-elect the embattled sitting president — just days after the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.
Team Biden-Harris started Wednesday with a video showing Harris, who many have said should replace President Biden atop the ticket, in attack-dog mode against the Ohio Republican senator and bestselling author, who is about to introduce himself to America from the Republican National Convention stage Wednesday night in Milwaukee.
In a 45-second video, Harris — who should know better than anyone currently in office how little hand the vice president has in formulating policy — lambasted Vance with tropes acutely familiar to those following Democratic messaging this cycle.
“Trump looked for someone he knew would be a rubber stamp for his extreme agenda. Make no mistake: JD Vance will be loyal only to Trump, not to our country,” Harris warned.
From there, the video delves into revisionist history, with Harris unfavorably comparing Vance to Trump’s first-term vice president.
“And unlike Mike Pence, Vance said he would have carried out Trump’s plan to overturn the 2020 election,” Harris claimed, before going on to link Vance to themes Democrats have used to paint the Republican campaign the most extreme in history (or at least since the last one).
“He supports a national abortion ban and voted against protecting IVF. And if elected, he will help implement the extreme Project 2025 plan for a second Trump term, which would target critical programs like Head Start and Medicare. But we are not going to let that happen.”
Project 2025 refers to the conservative list of policy proposals for a new Trump presidency the Heritage Foundation compiled.
While Trump has repudiated the plan, calling it abysmal, it’s nevertheless become the left’s new boogeyman, and Democrats are using it as a cudgel in the campaign.
Who is Trump’s VP pick, JD Vance?
- Trump announced Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) as his pick for vice president.
- The 39-year-old rose to prominence after writing his 2016 memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” reflecting on his time growing up in a working-class Ohio family.
- Vance would be the second-youngest vice president to ever assume office if Trump was elected for another term.
- In 2020, Vance apologized to Trump for his previous criticism and came to be a supporter. He deleted his previous critical posts of Trump and met with the then-president about his Senate run.
- President Biden dismissed Vance as “a clone of Trump on the issues” following the announcement.
- He was first elected to the Senate in the 2022 midterm cycle.
Harris’ preview of her prosecution of Trump follows other leading Democrats who have pushed the same messaging.
“JD Vance embodies MAGA — with an out-of-touch extreme agenda and plans to help Trump force his Project 2025 agenda on the American people,” Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison said during a press call Monday, after Trump announced his pick.
On the same call, Biden campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon echoed that warning, saying Vance “will make it his mission to enact Trump’s Project 2025 agenda at the expense of American families.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) chimed in to predict “the VP will take it to JD Vance” in a future debate.
While that remains to be seen, Harris and other Democrats’ playbook is already written. The message? JD = bad for democracy.