Veep candidate Sen. J.D. Vance introduced himself to an adoring RNC crowd Wednesday. Presidential candidate Donald J. Trump closes the convention in Milwaukee with his speech Thursday night. The New York Times has a transcript of Vance's speech here (subscription required).
THURSDAY 7/18/24
Vance Advances – From vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance’s point of view, traditional conservatives from the Bush/Romney wing of the GOP are RINOs. In his speech before the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee Wednesday night where he formally accepted his veep nomination, Vance expressed his empathy for blue-collar workers, both non-union and union members, while showing disdain for Wall Street, for trade deals with Mexico and China, and for the US invasion of Iraq after 9/11. Vance also mentioned Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, the key swing states in this year’s elections, as often as he could.
When Vance was in the fourth grade, Biden backed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) “that sent countless good jobs to Mexico,” he reminded the cheering RNC crowd. As a sophomore, he said, Biden backed a “sweetheart deal” with China, and while a high school senior, the current president supported the invasion of Iraq. You might have noticed these initiatives came largely from now-RINO’d Republicans.
“And somehow a real estate developer from New York City named Donald Trump was right in all these issues, and Joe Biden was wrong,” Vance said.
He decried “cheap Chinese goods” and low wages, and warned of China’s flow of fentanyl into the US (drug addiction was the villain of Vance’s 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy).
Vance, who left Appalachia to serve four years in the US Marines before attending The Ohio State University, then got a law degree at Yale University before becoming a tech venture capitalist, blamed Wall Street for “crashing” the economy, which led to American builders going out of business.
He didn’t point out that the resulting Great Recession stifled new construction for much of the ‘10s, but instead said Biden’s “inflation crisis is really an affordability crisis” for the costs of housing, groceries and gasoline.
“President Trump’s vision is so simple and yet so powerful,” Vance continued. “We’re done, ladies and gentlemen, catering to Wall Street. We’ll commit to the working man.”
The “we” in “we’re done” was meant to refer to American politicians, though it also refers to the traditional Republicans the MAGA GOP has effectively evicted from the party.
Of Ukraine … Vance is famous for being among the group of populist congressional Republicans who vehemently oppose continued military aid to Ukraine (and thus support for Vladimir Putin’s invasion), but he didn’t mention the country by name Wednesday night. He did say this: “Together, we will make sure our allies share in the burden of securing world peace. No more free rides for nations that betray the generosity of the American taxpayer.”
Of Taiwan … Meanwhile on Wall Street, tech stocks took a dive Wednesday when Bloomberg Business Week released an earlier interview with Trump in which the presidential candidate said Taiwan “should pay” for US protection against Chinese military aggression.
“Taiwan is 9,500 miles away,” Trump said. “It’s 68 miles away from China. … I don’t think we’re any different from an insurance policy.”
No doubt the former president also jolted Taiwan’s newly elected President Lai Ching-te, who is dealing with a divided government.
Factoid… Punchbowl News notes that Trump is the first politician since Richard Nixon (1960, ’68 and ’72) to be nominated by his party three times and would be the first president since Grover Cleveland to serve non-consecutive terms.
•••
Biden Falls Ill – Joe Biden told Ed Gordon of BET News in an interview released Wednesday that “if a medical condition emerged” he would drop out of the presidential race. That evening, Biden returned to his Delaware beach house from a campaign stop in Las Vegas with a mild case of COVID, NPR’s Morning Edition reports. While “mild covid” would have to make a big leap to become a “medical condition” the virus whose treatment by then-President Trump helped lead to Biden’s 2020 election victory gives a bit more hope to Democrats already calling on him to step down.
Whether or not Biden and his close circle can use COVID as an excuse to hand over his campaign to Vice President Harris or another, younger, more vigorous candidate, it’s difficult to see any other path to victory by a severely divided Democratic Party.
--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa
__________________________________________
Make America Strong -- …once again. That’s the Republican National Convention’s Wednesday theme, which might seem to play in Donald J. Trump’s post-assassination attempt fist-bump accompanying exhortation to his supporters to “FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT.” But in Wednesday’s case “make America strong” means ending aid to Ukraine in its defense against Russia, withdrawing from NATO and isolating the US in general.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), passed over as Trump’s 2024 running mate in favor of Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), previewed Wednesday in his Tuesday evening speech before the RNC, saying “There is nothing dangerous nor divisive when putting America first.”
ICYMI, Tuesday’s theme was “Make America Safe Once Again,” in which several speeches included variations of an erroneous assertion that crime and violent crime is booming under President Biden. The opposite is quite true, with crime statistics falling quickly since the pandemic.
Former Trump challenger Nikki Haley was the keynote Tuesday, after having first been passed over for an invitation to the RNC.
“President Trump asked me to speak in the name of unity,” Haley told the crowd. Like Trump running mate J.D. Vance, though much more recently, she has done a 180 on her previous warnings about the ex-president’s fitness for the job. “Donald Trump has my strong endorsement. Period.”
A vote for Biden is a vote for Kamala Harris, Haley said, asserting Biden would not complete a full second term if re-elected.
“For the sake of our nation, we have to go with Donald Trump,” Haley continued. She noted that like her, there are Americans who “don’t agree with Donald Trump 100% of the time.”
Though a staunch pro-Ukrainian candidate earlier this year, Haley said the wars in Ukraine and Gaza belong to Biden, not Trump.
“A strong president doesn’t start wars. A strong president prevents wars.
•••
Meanwhile, on the Left – A group of Democratic lawmakers are calling on the Democratic National Committee to halt plans to hold a virtual roll call nomination vote for President Biden ahead of next month’s convention, NPR’s Morning Edition reports. The letter, which NPR obtained from two different sources, calls the virtual nomination a “terrible idea” that would sap party morale.
While the letter has been signed by Democrats who want Biden to remain their candidate, as well as Democrats who want him to step down and others who have not announced a position, all clearly want more time for the question to play out of whether Biden can indeed beat Donald J. Trump in November.
•••
Menendez Guilty – A federal jury found Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) guilty on all 16 counts in his corruption trial Tuesday (per Politico). Federal prosecutors had charged the senator with bribery, acting as a foreign agent for Egypt, obstruction of justice, extortion and conspiring to commit these crimes.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has called on Menendez to step down, though the New Jersey senator has been defiant all through the investigation and two-month trial.
“I am deeply disappointed by the jury’s decision,” Menendez said Tuesday. “I have every faith that the law and the facts did not sustain that decision and that we will be successful upon appeal.”
US District Judge Sidney Stein will sentence Menendez, 70, October 29. He faces decades in prison.
If Menendez does step down for the few remaining months of his term, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) will appoint a successor, likely to be Rep. Andy Kim, who is the Democratic nominee for the seat’s full term beginning next year.
--TL
__________________________________________
TUESDAY 7/16/24
Strike of the Tech Bros – (And a coal barron…) Elon Musk has formed a new Super PAC supporting Donald J. Trump’s candidacy with a commitment of about $45 million per month up to November 5, The Wall Street Journal reports, not coincidentally in tune with the ex-president’s pick of Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) as his running mate.
Also joining in on America PAC are Joe Lonsdale, co-founder of Palantir Tech, the Winklevos Twins (once in dispute with Mark Zuckerberg over the founding of Facebook) and Joe Craft, CEO of coal producer Alliance Resource Partners whose wife, Kelly Craft, was ambassador to Canada.
This news, and not Trump’s announcement that Vance is his running mate, nor Trump showing up with a bandage around his right ear, was top news at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee Monday night.
About Winklevos v. Zuckerberg… Coincidentally (?) Trump last week Tuesday posted on his Truth Social he vowed to imprison “election fraudsters” including Zuckerberg, according to Business Insider. Or as capitalization enthusiast Trump wrote it; “All I can say is that if I’m elected President, we will pursue Election Fraudsters at levels never seen before, and they will be sent to prison for long periods of time!”
The take on Vance… Trump’s veep pick suggests a “break with the Republican orthodoxy of the last several decades on a range of policy issues, including unions, antitrust, trade and taxes,” according to The Washington Post. But Vance’s connection with X-Twitter owner and Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk – somewhere at or near the top of the list of world’s richest men, depending on the day – suggests the Hillbilly Elegy author might be leaning libertarian-ward, with a reverence for such tech innovators/American oligarchs.
Probably a good time to list the other job on Vance’s CV: venture capitalist.
The union factor… Teamsters President Sean O’Brien became the first-ever union leader to address the Republican National Convention Monday, telling a cheering audience that Trump “has the backbone to open the doors to the Republican convention that’s unprecedented,” per The Washington Post. “You can have whatever opinion you want but one thing is clear: President Trump is a candidate who’s unafraid to hear from new, loud, and often critical voices.”
Oh, and ... Republicans also outlined their 2024 platform at the convention. Read details here.
-- TL
__________________________________________
MONDAY 7/15/24
Vance is Running Mate -- It's official, having appeared on Truth Social: J.D. Vance, 39, is Donald J. Trump's running mate for the November election (per The Washington Post). Vance, of Ohio, was elected to the Senate two years ago in the mid-terms. He is otherwise known for writing Hillbilly Elegy, published in 2016.
•••
Cannon Dismisses -- U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has dismissed the classified documents case against Donald J. Trump on grounds that special counsel Jack Smith was not constitutionally appointed and funded by US Congress, The Washington Post reports Monday. Other federal courts have rejected similar arguments. It is uncertain whether Smith will appeal to a higher court in the case.
•••
From Assassination Attempt to Unity? – Donald J. Trump has torn up his Republican National Convention speech to “preach unity,” the Washington Examiner reports Sunday in its exclusive first interview with the ex-president a day after Thomas Matthew Crooks’ attempted assassination in Butler, Pennsylvania. After raising his fist in defiance when the Secret Service gathered him up, the “retribution” candidate now signals he is about to go soft this week at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee.
“The speech I was going to give on Thursday was going to be a humdinger. Had this not happened, this would have been one of the most incredible speeches” reportedly aimed at criticizing President Biden’s policies. “Honestly, it’s going to be a whole different speech now.”
Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), who appears to be a shaved beard away from becoming Trump’s running mate, will be in Milwaukee, too. But Vance apparently hopes to become a bulldog to Trump’s kinder, gentler populism, as the senator blames President Biden and his campaign for the assassination attempt. Never mind that Vance might not be a contender for running mate this year had Trump’s supporters not threatened to hang Vice President Mike Pence on January 6, 2021.
“The central premise of the Biden campaign is that Donald Trump is an American fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination,” Vance wrote on X-Twitter, per Politico.
Rep. Eric Swalwell responded on X, (also per Politico): “You called Trump ‘American Hitler’”, referring to Vance’s much earlier take on the once and current presidential candidate; “Now show yourself back to the kid’s table. … Violence will NEVER be the answer.”
Biden spent much of Sunday trying to be as cordial toward Trump as Trump has promised to be at the RNC. First, the president cancelled a Monday visit to the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, then gave both a short press conference (taking no reporter questions), and later Sunday evening speaking against political violence from the Oval Office.
“We cannot, we will not go down this road in America.” Biden said.
Former First Lady Melania Trump similarly called on America “to ascend above the hate in these times.”
Meanwhile…Biden has called for a review of the Secret Service’s actions surrounding the assassination attempt, in which one audience member was killed and two others were critically injured. But House Oversight Committee Republicans have been investigating the Secret Service for months, according to Real Clear Politics. A Secret Service agent fatally shot Crooks, 20, after the gunman fired eight rounds.
--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa
_____
COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news