Establishment media outlet Axios on Monday fact checked Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH), who attacked opponent J.D. Vance (R) during last week’s debate for “investing into China.”
During the debate, Vance confronted Ryan for his political attack ads claiming he is a “San Francisco vulture capitalist,” in addition to Ryan’s claims that the Republican “invested into China.”
Without being able to point to any investments Vance made into China, Ryan said, “The problem is… Because of guys like you, J.D., who make money off of investing into China. He, in his first venture capital fund investments, invested in China.”
When Vance asked “which company” Ryan was talking about, the Democrat uttered, “The one that ships jobs, ships jobs to China to manufacture things. … I’m telling you, J.D., you’ve not denied investing into China.”
Watch the exchange:
Despite Ryan’s efforts to try to attack Vance, Axios reported that “Ryan couldn’t stick the landing” of his attacks that Vance ‘invested into China,’ not being able to name the company to which he was referring” because “Vance never backed a China-based company via his venture capital funds, per a review of the records.”
The report further explained:
- Instead, Ryan apparently was referring to two companies on Vance’s financial disclosure forms that source some equipment and/or products from China, both tied to Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund (which Vance joined in 2017 and left two years later to launch his own firm).
- But that’s a bit like saying an investment in Ford Motor Co. is “investing in China,” because Ford sources some EV battery packs from Chinese suppliers. Moreover, one of the two investments was made by Revolution co-founder Steve Case before Vance even joined the firm, but got rolled into the fund as a contributed asset. The other is a Salt Lake City-based apparel maker that has around 22% of its products made in Shanghai and Tianjin factories (the investment was made shortly before Vance left Revolution) [emphasis added].
In response to the Axios report, Vance’s campaign spokesperson told Breitbart News, “Fifty thousand jobs have disappeared from the Mahoning Valley since Tim Ryan took office twenty years ago. Drug overdoses are up, and household incomes are down. Tim can’t run on his own record, so he has to fabricate lies about JD Vance. If this is the best Tim Ryan’s got, you know he’s really in trouble.”
Jacob Bliss is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at jbliss@breitbart.com or follow him on Twitter @JacobMBliss.