David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to then-President Barack Obama, said Sunday that Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio)’s handling of the assassination attempt on former President Trump was unbecoming of the vice presidency.
“If @JDVance1 is on the running for VP, this tweet, posted one hour after the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, should disqualify him in the eyes of the Trump campaign,” Axelrod wrote on social platform X, reposting Vance’s statement.
Vance, who is a leading contender to be Trump’s running mate, said in a social media post on Saturday that the shooting was “not an isolated incident” and suggested President Biden’s campaign was at least partly to blame.
“The Biden campaign’s central argument is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” Vance wrote. “This rhetoric led directly to the assassination attempt on President Trump.”
But Axelrod sharply criticized Vance’s response, calling it “the wrong mood of the moment,” and suggested the Trump administration might not be interested in a running mate with such polarizing sentiment.
“As we know it right now, the profile of the perpetrator doesn’t appear to match Vance’s premise, but let’s at least wait and see!,” Axelrod said. “Trump wouldn’t want a snap-judgment vice president.”
The post came after what authorities called an assassination attempt, the most serious since the shooting of President Reagan in 1981. A suspect opened fire at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, wounding the former president before being taken away by authorities, clutching his ear, which appeared to be bleeding.
Republicans and Democrats have called for widespread unity in the wake of the shooting as the FBI and federal authorities investigate the circumstances that led a gunman to shoot the former president.
FBI officials said the suspect’s motive is not yet clear, but he appears to have acted alone.
