Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said Sunday that former President Trump should change his “very bad choice” to nominate Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, as his running mate.
While discussing the upcoming presidential election during an appearance on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Schumer decided to mention the “addition of J.D. Vance” to the Republican nomination.
“This is a very bad choice,” Schumer said. “I know Donald Trump, and he’s probably sitting there watching TV, but every day a story comes out about Vance doing something more extreme, more bizarre, more outlandish. Vance seems more outlandish, more extreme than President Trump.”
“President Trump is probably scratching his head and thinking, ‘Why did he pick this guy?’ This choice may be one of the best things he’s ever done for the Democratic Party,” Schumer said.
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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called on former President Trump to replace Sen. J.D. Vance as his running mate. (Getty Images)
“The president has about 10 days, 10 days to get Ohio’s votes finalized,” Schumer said, referring to Trump, a former president and 2024 Republican presidential nominee.
“And he has a choice: Do I keep Vance on the shortlist,” Schumer said, “and he’s already got a lot of problems, and he’s probably going to get more problems as more stories come out about him in the coming weeks, or do I pick someone new? What is his choice?”
The left has criticized Vance, the Ohio senator, in recent days over comments he made in a 2021 interview that appeared to be disparaging of “childless, cat-loving women” in the Democratic Party.
“This country is effectively run, through the Democrats and the corporate oligarchy, by childless catwomen who are unhappy with their lives and the choices they make, so they want the rest of the country to be unhappy, too,” Vance said three years ago, specifically naming Vice President Harris and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) as part of that group.
Speaking on Fox News’ “The Brian Kilmeade Show,” Chris LaCivita, a senior adviser to the Trump 2024 campaign, said Vance’s interview was “clearly taken out of context,” adding that the Trump-Vance campaign is not against “childless women” as the liberal media has said.
Vance, the author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” a memoir made into a Netflix film about his time as a Yale Law School student growing up in Appalachia, gained national attention when Trump named him his running mate at the start of the Republican National Convention.
Senator J.D. Vance introduces former President Trump during a rally at the Herb Brooks National Hockey Center in St. Cloud, Minnesota on July 27, 2024. (Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
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Republicans see Vance, whose mother has been sober for 10 years, as someone who speaks to a forgotten working-class America.
But the Harris campaign is trying to counter that messaging.
In a video shared a few weeks ago, Harris claimed Vance was “solely loyal to Trump, not our country,” and added, [Trump’s] It’s an extreme agenda.”
But Vance, a Marine veteran who served in Iraq, fired back at a campaign rally with Trump in Minnesota on Saturday.
Vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance speaks at a campaign rally in St. Cloud, Minnesota on July 27, 2024. (Alex Wroblewski/AFP via Getty Images)
“I saw the other day that Kamala Harris was questioning my loyalty to this country, and the word she used was loyalty. It’s an interesting word. Always loyalty, because nothing shows more disloyalty to this country than what Kamala Harris has done on our southern border,” Vance said. “I want to ask the vice president, has she done anything to call into question my loyalty to this country?”
“I served in the Marines. I went to Iraq for this country. I built a business for this country. And my running mate took a bullet for this country. So my question to Kamala Harris: Have you ever done anything to call into question our loyalty to America?” Vance added. “And the answer, folks, is nothing.”
Asked how Governor Harris should address Republican criticism of her immigration policies, Schumer told CBS host Robert Costa that congressional Democrats and the Biden-Harris administration have “established the toughest border policies to stop people coming across the border that we’ve seen in a very, very long time.”
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He argued that the plan was initially supported by Republicans, but that Trump wanted chaos at the border so he could campaign.
“We are happy to raise the issue. And every time we raise the issue, voters are on our side, not their policies. We were going to fix the border. Trump and his Republican minions said, ‘Don’t fix it, we want chaos for political purposes.’ Who do you think is going to win this argument?” Schumer said.
Fox News’ Garbriel Hayes contributed to this report.
