A lot has been said about the JD Vance selection by Donald Trump. Does the freshman Ohio senator do enough to bring new voters into the fold? Is he non-controversial enough to not be a drag on the ticket?
I’ll let others continue to argue over those questions, most of which won’t be answered until the votes are cast. What I know for certain, though, is that he is an absolute wizard in a debate setting, and that includes battling loaded questions from journalists.
On Thursday, Vance highlighted that while visiting the southern border. After his remarks, a CNN reporter approached to try to race-bait him. What followed was a masterclass in how you handle the press.
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REPORTER: The former president’s comments to the NABJ where he said that Vice President Harris is quote “all the sudden black.” As a father of three bi-racial children, do those comments give you pause at all?
Let’s stop there for a moment because I have to give Vance credit for being cool under pressure. Bringing up his young children to try to make a political point is so far out of bounds that you can’t see the ball anymore. Had I been asked that question, I very likely would have made an issue of that. Vance knew the assignment, though, and he didn’t want to get sidetracked. Here’s his response.
VANCE: They don’t give me pause at all. Look, all he said is that Kamala Harris is a chameleon. She goes to Georgia two days ago, she was raised in Canada, and she puts on a fake Southern accent. She is everything to everybody, and she pretends to be somebody different depending on which audience she’s in front of. I think it’s totally reasonable for the president to call that all, and that’s all he did.
I mean look, she’s running as a tough-on-crime prosecutor even though she implemented open border policies. She’s saying she wants to support the police yet she wanted to defund the police just three years ago. It’s totally reasonable to call out the fact that she pretends to be somebody different depending on the audience that she’s talking to.
Lost in all the arguments over Vance’s effect on the ticket is the fact that he’s probably going to destroy whoever he draws in a debate. These adversarial settings are where he shines. You can ask him just about anything, and he’s going to have a well-thought-out, well-spoken answer ready to go.
Josh Shapiro, who is the favorite to be Kamala Harris’ VP selection, can read a teleprompter and do his best Barack Obama impression. He’s never gone head-to-head with someone like Vance, though. To that point, Shapiro refused to even debate during his 2022 gubernatorial election. He won’t be able to get out of doing the work this time.
That’s one of the reasons Democrats are attacking Vance so heavily despite the vice presidential choice not typically being at the forefront. Whether he was technically the “best” overall choice or not, they fear him, and they know a debate is coming up where he’s going to shine.
