In an interview Saturday, Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio) criticized fellow Ohioan and current Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. J.D. Vance, saying he’s “not good for Ohio.”
“J.D. Vance is not good for Ohio, he’s not good for America and he doesn’t fight for the average citizen,” Beatty said. said “The Katie Pang Show” on MSNBC. “He’s actually more of a joke than a weirdo.”
Compared to Vance, more respondents in a recent ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll had a favorable view of his Democratic opponent, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz: 39% of respondents in the poll said they had a “very” or “somewhat” favorable view of the Minnesota governor, while 32% said they had a “very” or “somewhat” favorable view of the Ohio senator.
“If you think about how he got from his job to this position, it was a super-big Republican tech billionaire who walked him out the door,” Beatty said, presumably referring to billionaire Peter Thiel, who joined venture capital firm Vance after law school and donated $15 million to a super PAC supporting him in the 2022 midterm elections.
“So things are left to him. [Vice President] “Kamala Harris has had to fight her whole life,” Beatty continued.
Both Vance, the Minnesota governor, and Walz, the Ohio senator, posted on social media this week that they had accepted invitations to debate on CBS, with the debate scheduled to take place in early October.
“The American people have a right to as much debate as possible. That’s why [former] “President Trump has already challenged Kamala to a debate three times,” Vance said. “I am accepting the CBS debate on October 1st as well as the CNN debate on September 18th. I look forward to seeing you both there!”
A spokesperson for Vance said in an email to The Hill that he “grew up in poverty.”
“He had a tough childhood, an absent father and a mother who struggled with drug addiction,” Luke Schroeder said. “After high school, he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and served his country honorably for four years, including a tour of Iraq. He then took advantage of the GI Bill to attend Ohio State University, attend Yale Law School and invest in a business that now supports hundreds of jobs in Ohio and the Midwest. JD had the American Dream. For Congressman Beatty to claim things were ‘given’ to him is an insult to all working class Americans who have struggled to overcome hardships.”
