Talking about JD Vance, he said
And I gotta tell you, I can’t wait to debate the guy.
That is, if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up.
…See what I did there?
The rest of his speech is worth a watch, to see just how good of a pick he really was.
It’s sort of baffling why he picked Vance - what exactly does he bring to the table? All the polling I’ve seen suggest Republicans don’t really like him, and that’s been Trump’s game to just get his supporters more excited…
Pence made sense, because he brought a segment that Trump has no connection to
he was energizing when he was first announced, and he was viewed as an effective “messenger” in the same way that Walz is. Clearly the Trump & Co skimped on vetting JD ahead of time, though.
Because Trump is a narcissist and needs to pick someone who doesn’t overshadow himself in any way and will be subservient to his every whim.
There’s not many options after those criteria.
It’s funny because JD Vance is overshadowing Trump. I see more talk about JD Vance than I do about Trump.
Trump needs the hate and attention, his supporters like him because he is counter-culture. Trump is their guy in the fight. If that stops then Trump becomes just an old rich white guy. This is why Trump plays the victim card every speech and talks about all the attacks he’s constantly suffering.
The real problem for Trump is that Vance is an entirely new weak spot. Everyone knows Trump at this point, he is actually quite difficult to attack because most people already have a pretty locked in opinion about him. It’s very difficult to change votes with a campaign focusrd solely on Trump. Vance is a lot more unknown and thus Democrats actually have a really good chance to shape how the public sees him. It helps massively that Vance is a genuinely unusual character. If the election ends up being as tight as is currently predicted, a bad VP pick could be very costly for Trump.
Well…
Hubris. They were up in the polls at the time and didn’t think they needed to expand their appeal, so they caved and took Thiel’s guy.