Donald J. Trump knew that JD Vance could take a punch. But during their first week together on the campaign trail, the former president wondered just how many hits his new running mate could absorb.
The volume and velocity of attacks from Democrats stunned even Mr. Trump. He was unaware of the most incendiary remarks that opponents were rapidly unearthing from Mr. Vance’s past, and the former president told allies that he was troubled by the idea that more comments would come to light as Democrats savaged his heir apparent as weird and anti-women.
A month later, polls show that the number of Americans who dislike Mr. Vance continues to grow — but Mr. Trump could not be happier.
The reason: Mr. Vance’s relentless pace of full-throttle performances as Mr. Trump’s well-trained attack dog has pleased the former president and instilled a sense of stability inside a campaign still shaken by President Biden’s sudden exit from the race.
Mr. Trump had instructed his young sidekick to fight forcefully through those initial attacks, and later said Mr. Vance’s execution exceeded his expectations, according to three allies who insisted on anonymity to discuss private conversations.
In a quintessentially Trumpian display of bravado, the former president has privately praised Mr. Vance by comparing himself to Vince Lombardi, telling people that his eye for political talent was now on par with the Hall of Fame football coach’s ability to find Super Bowl-caliber players.
But beyond Mar-a-Lago, early returns on Mr. Vance are less enthusiastic. Polls show that he effectively amplifies Mr. Trump’s political strengths but that he also magnifies his weaknesses. Mr. Vance’s approval rating improved by nearly double digits among the nation’s least educated and poorest voters since joining the Republican ticket — but plunged by even wider margins among college graduates and independent women, according to an NPR/PBS News/Marist poll.
How those conflicting opinions either resolve themselves or become further inflamed will help determine whether Mr. Trump ends the race in less than 10 weeks with a second presidential term or a second electoral defeat.
“JD never had a honeymoon — he had a hurricane, but I think a lot of that is in the rearview mirror now,” said Charlie Kirk, a Republican activist close to the Trump campaign. “He’s further animated the conservative base and also voters we are looking to run up the score with, which are white working-class voters and young male voters.”
Democrats, however, have been outraged and confounded by Mr. Vance’s vice-presidential bid. This year, Mr. Trump had spoken at length about finding a running mate who was uniquely qualified to take over as president — and then picked Mr. Vance, who assumed his first elected office just last year and turned 40 less than a month ago.
Mr. Vance would be the nation’s youngest vice president since 1953, when Richard Nixon took the oath of office at 40. Common traits run through their backgrounds and early careers.
Both were born into poor families and earned law degrees from prestigious universities, Duke for Mr. Nixon and Yale for Mr. Vance. Both served in the military. Mr. Nixon had a more robust political résumé, but both were also less than two years into their first terms in the Senate when they joined their party’s presidential ticket.
Mr. Nixon was arguably one of the most combative vice-presidential contenders of the past century, although Mr. Vance may challenge him in that regard.
Mr. Vance has accused Vice President Kamala Harris of being personally responsible for the deaths of 13 service members in Afghanistan in 2021 and of opening the southern border to “let these cartels bring in the poison that’s killing our families.” He has said that she plans to buy oil from “every tin-pot dictator,” is more interested in building the economy in “Communist China” than at home and longs to put truck drivers out of business to force them into computer-coding classes.
And that was all from one 30-minute event on Wednesday in Erie, Pa.
“I really don’t know what Trump was thinking with this pick because Vance hasn’t done anything to show he’s ready to be the leader of the free world,” said Joel Benenson, a Democratic pollster who worked for former President Barack Obama. “Is he doing anything other than playing to the conservative base? The answer is no, and you don’t win elections from the left or the right. You win from the middle out, and these guys are not appealing to the middle.”
The most damaging attack on Mr. Vance last month centered on his comments from a Fox News interview in 2021, when he lamented the numerous “childless cat ladies” among American leaders, including Ms. Harris.
Many voters shrug off similar comments from Mr. Trump because they view the 78-year-old former president as something of an elderly uncle “who doesn’t understand the world has changed,” said Bill Kristol, who was the chief of staff for Vice President Dan Quayle in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
“But Vance has gone out of his way to adopt a set of views from an ideological, right-wing milieu on things like child-rearing and how women should more or less stay home,” said Mr. Kristol, an organizer of Republican Voters Against Trump. “That is harder to understand from someone who is 40.”
The Trump campaign had planned to ease Mr. Vance into the spotlight, but the furor over “cat ladies” accelerated that timetable.
Mr. Vance’s excitement at joining the fray was immediately visible. He arrived with a fresh haircut and neatly trimmed beard for his first solo rally, a hometown event in Middletown, Ohio. In a sign of his astonishment at every warm welcome from his pro-Trump crowds, Mr. Vance opened each event for the first several weeks with the same single exclamation: “Wow!”
He has enjoyed traveling with family members aboard his chartered Boeing 737. His wife, Usha, is rarely without a book in her hands. His mother, Beverly Aikins, posed for selfies at an A&W in Big Rapids, Mich., and joined him at a private fund-raiser in Nashville. His father-in-law, Krish Chilukuri, carried an oversize bag of popcorn onboard for his day on the trail as if he anticipated an entertaining show.
Since Mr. Trump announced his selection on July 15, Mr. Vance has held two dozen campaign events, mainly in the battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. He has hosted about two dozen fund-raisers. He has participated in more than 70 interviews on television, conservative radio and podcasts, as well as with newspaper and magazine reporters. At least 10 other times, he has answered questions from reporters traveling on his campaign plane.
Mr. Vance’s media strategy, allies said, functioned as his attempt to reach beyond the conservative base and to joust — carefully and respectfully, for the most part — with network anchors.
“Every V.P. candidate gets attacked when they’re chosen; it’s how you handle it that matters,” said Senator Steve Daines, a Montana Republican overseeing his party’s Senate campaigns. “They’re throwing hardballs at him, throwing curveballs at him, and he’s really been very impressive.”
Mr. Vance’s interactions with reporters produced one of his most effective days on the trail when he attacked his Democratic counterpart, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota. The Harris campaign had posted an old video of Mr. Walz pushing to restrict access to “weapons of war that I carried in war.” Mr. Walz served 24 years in the military but never in combat.
Mr. Vance and his team had been searching for some way to disrupt a streak of positive news for Ms. Harris, who had unified her party around her nomination, and their tactic of highlighting the discrepancy worked. Cable networks broke into their coverage to report his criticisms of Mr. Walz.
Some pundits concluded that the move had been designed by Chris LaCivita, a senior Trump campaign adviser who had played a key role in similar “Swift Boat” attacks on Senator John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic nominee. But Mr. Vance had anticipated the opportunity on his own and quickly seized it.
Later, when his plane followed Air Force Two into Chippewa Valley Regional Airport in Wisconsin, he hurried down the tarmac straight for Ms. Harris’s plane.
Her motorcade sped off before Mr. Vance could execute any publicity stunt, so he instead spent a few minutes with reporters who had gathered to see Ms. Harris. He mostly mocked Ms. Harris for not taking more questions, a criticism that remains a top talking point for Republicans.
“I just wanted to check out my future plane,” Mr. Vance said when he returned to his motorcade.
Ms. Harris’s campaign later posted a meme-style video on social media aimed at mocking Mr. Vance. The clip shows her meeting with Girl Scouts on the tarmac before quickly cutting to footage of Mr. Vance’s arrival. A narrator says, “All of a sudden, I hear this agitating, grating voice.”
Mr. Vance’s self-assured manner with the news media has reached the point where questions from reporters now account for about half of his typical 30-minute events. The rules are stacked in his favor.
Mr. Vance seeks questions mostly from local outlets, which, by definition, are typically focused on regional issues. The news media is corralled at the back of the room, where the microphone is held by campaign staff members, limiting opportunities for follow-up questions.
“You all want to see me take some questions from the media?” Mr. Vance asked a crowd inside a Wisconsin warehouse stacked with PVC products on Wednesday.
An approving roar erupted from the crowd.
But unscripted events carry risk, too. At a trucking logistics company in Pennsylvania, Mr. Vance’s audience sustained a chorus of earsplitting boos when a woman introduced herself as a reporter from CNN.
The next reporter stumbled on her question, and multiple audience members heckled her and loudly mimicked her stammer.
Mr. Vance also overextended himself while speaking about a confrontation between Mr. Trump’s team and Arlington National Cemetery officials. Mr. Vance angrily cursed Ms. Harris for her response to the incident — but she has said nothing. Her campaign’s only reaction was from a spokesman who offered a brief and largely unnoticed response to a question during a cable news interview.
“She wants to yell at Donald Trump because he showed up?” Mr. Vance said to applause. “She can go to hell.”
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