Vance defends Trump against criticisms of personal attacks on Harris

Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) defended former President Donald Trump against GOP warnings to refrain from personal attacks against Vice President Kamala Harris during remarks to the Milwaukee Police Association on Friday.

“I don’t think the president needs to pivot. And if I told him that, I can guess what he’d say,” Vance said to some laughter from the audience, when asked by a reporter. “I think that the reason that President Trump has been so successful connecting with Americans is even when they disagree with something that he might say, they know that he just is who he is, right?”

Since Harris replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic 2024 presidential nominee, Trump has attacked the vice president over her biracial identity, questioned her intelligence, and frequently commented about a Time magazine cover featuring Harris.

High-profile GOP leaders, including at least two former primary rivals, Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley, have implored Trump to criticize Harris over policy differences, which comes with far less risk of alienating centrist and independent voters in battleground states. But so far, Trump appears to be ignoring the advice.

“I’d much rather have a political candidate who I disagreed with 25% of the time, but was a real human being and was willing to speak off the cuff, than to have somebody like Kamala Harris who hides behind a teleprompter and doesn’t speak to the American people directly unless she’s got a script in front of her telling her exactly what to say,” Vance continued.

One day earlier, Trump himself was unequivocal in his right to blast Harris. “I think I’m entitled to personal attacks,” Trump told reporters at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

“I don’t have a lot of respect for her. I don’t have a lot of respect for her intelligence, and I think she’ll be a terrible president, and I think it’s very important that we win,” Trump added. “And whether the personal attacks are good, bad, I mean, she certainly attacks me personally. She actually called me weird. ‘He’s weird.’ It was just a sound bite, and she called J.D. and I weird. He’s not weird. He was a great student at Yale. He went to Ohio State, graduated in two years at the top of his class, and all of these different things.”

The Trump campaign has frequently slammed Harris for dodging any substantive press conferences or interviews since Biden suspended his campaign. The former president held two press conferences in one week to needle Harris while also making mention of his policy stances on various topics, including the economy and the border.

“I was in Pennsylvania yesterday, talking about veterans issues. I was in Michigan the day before, talking about how we have to stop the trade and energy policies that ship all of our manufacturing jobs to China,” Vance said, defending the GOP ticket’s embrace of policy issues.

“So we are talking about the policy, and we’re talking about the issues,” the Republican vice presidential candidate said. “And we’re going to keep on doing that, but my only advice to my running mate is be yourself and let people see who you are. And I think he’s doing that every day on the campaign trail.”

In his second trip to the Badger State this month, Vance sought to disrupt Harris’s embrace of her past role as a prosecutor in her battle against Trump, who was convicted of 34 felony counts by a jury in the New York borough of Manhattan.

The Ohio senator also downplayed a new ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll showing Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), Harris’s running mate, as being viewed more favorably than Vance. “I don’t put much stock in polls, especially at this early level,” Vance said. “I think Gov. Walz was nominated just a couple of weeks ago. He’s received a ridiculous media honeymoon where they’ve hidden, a lot of press have hidden, some of the things that he said and done.”

“I think when people know the truth about Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, their anti-crime record, their pro-criminal record, the fact that he let rioters burn down the largest city in Minneapolis, I don’t think his approval ratings are going to be that high,” the senator added. “And I think that Donald Trump and I are going to win this race.”

After Vance’s engagement with the media, the Milwaukee Police Association endorsed Vance and Trump’s presidential ticket as the GOP bolsters its credentials with law enforcement officers.