Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), former President Donald Trump’s running mate, told Breitbart News exclusively in a written interview after his victorious debate performance against Minnesota’s Democrat Gov. Tim Walz last week that Trump deserves the credit for developing the strategy that propelled him to victory.
Vance told Breitbart News that Trump told him in the lead-up to the debate that he should focus his criticisms on Vice President Kamala Harris—the Democrats’ presidential nominee—rather than wasting time and energy on Walz. Vance said Trump’s idea clearly “worked,” and he thanked the former president for it afterwards.
In addition, Vance explained in this exclusive interview how Trump goes about his decision-making process, soliciting input from many people including regular folks, not just well-connected political strategists, before he makes a decision. That process, Vance said, while sometime difficult to manage and execute given Trump’s high-profile nature and security risks — especially in the wake of not just one but two failed assassination attempts against him in the past couple months — is worth it because Trump stays “grounded” with where the people actually are and in touch with the voters. Vance’s comments on this front are particularly illuminating as he himself is now a U.S. Secret Service protected individual as Trump’s running mate, and hearing one of the candidates describe how the two of them accomplish this is fascinating.
Vance also ripped Democrats generally—and Harris as well specifically—for being very out of touch with Americans for the past several decades in which they have mostly held power. Vance described Trump’s first term as the only time in decades that ordinary Americans got a “break” from globalist elite control. Trump, Vance said, stands “in defiance to the globalists” who have profited off of America’s decline, while Harris empowers those very same globalists to continue to line their pockets while ordinary Americans struggle.
What follows are the questions Breitbart News sent to Vance after his debate with Walz and Vance’s answers in full.
BREITBART NEWS NETWORK (BNN): I distinctly remember lots of globalists hysterically attacking Trump for picking you as his running mate — but your performance at the Vice Presidential debate seems to confirm that he made the right decision on this front and that Kamala Harris’s decision on a running mate was questionable at best. I think this really speaks to Trump’s judgment on the strengths and abilities of people he’s empowering. Do you think this proves he’s better equipped to make the right decisions beyond just a running mate, but staffing the entire federal government which entails thousands of political appointments?
SEN. JD VANCE (R-OH): Well, I’m obviously biased, but I think he made the right choice in his VP! The thing that people still don’t appreciate about his decision-making is that he likes to hear from a lot of people. He’ll talk to the cashier at McDonald’s, the gardener at Mar-A-Lago, a fireman, and then a billionaire businessman. Because he’s so open at talking to people, he has a better sense of where the American people actually are than any American leader in recent history. And it’s not easy, by the way, because between Secret Service and everything else, you live in a bubble. Trump manages to puncture that bubble and stay grounded to the people. I’ve tried to learn from that as much as possible. It’s why we do a lot of “OTRs” and unscripted events on the campaign trail. There are risks to it, but if you’re not getting out there and talking to people you start to live in your own echo chamber.
Obviously that process led him to pick me as his VP, but it’s also a part of how we’ve interacted since he made the selection. We’re always trading stories, talking about what we’re hearing, and trying to understand how best to make our argument to the American people. Many of the best ideas on strategy and what to say I got from President Trump—either from private conversations we had in the days leading up to the debate, or just from his debates that I’ve watched.
BNN: It seemed like Walz’s strategy at the debate was not to attack you but to attack Trump. But correct me if I’m wrong — it seems to me that the biggest moment of the night was arguably when you pointed out how tough of a job Walz had trying to lie about the successes of the Trump administration and sell the failures of the Kamala Harris-Joe Biden administration.
VANCE: Yeah, so interestingly, Walz and I had sort of mirror strategies. He wanted to attack President Trump and I wanted to define Kamala Harris’s record. The entire idea for our strategy came, funny enough, from President Trump. I was talking to him a few weeks ago, just sort of shooting the breeze about the debate, and he said, “You should just be tough on her.” And it kind of hit me: everyone in the world has an opinion on Donald Trump, but people are still learning about who Kamala Harris is. Why would I use precious time to try to attack Tim Walz? Kamala Harris is the top of the ticket on their side and her policies have opened the border and made a ton of basic necessities unaffordable. I should use my time to prosecute the case against Kamala Harris. Our entire debate strategy revolved around doing exactly that.
And one of the things that came from that is: well, why not use Walz’s own record as a weapon against Kamala Harris? A more traditional strategy would be to try to point out the inconsistencies between Walz and his running mate. We ended up using this differences to highlight how bad Kamala Harris’s record was. When I called the president after the debate I just said “thank you” because the strategy paid off.
BNN: One of the other big takeaways I had from the vice presidential debate as well was how a Trump administration will have empathy for people who are suffering right now under Kamala Harris’s lack of leadership. You went to great lengths to articulate how the policies under Harris have harmed people but the policies under Trump helped people. Can you further flesh out that through line for us? Harris has been in government for four years and hasn’t done all these rosy things she said she will do, but Trump when he was president did actually do all the things he said he will do, right?
VANCE: It’s not just that she’s been in government for four years, but that her party has dominated government for much of the last 20 years. From Obama to Biden to Kamala Harris, there was only one presidential term where normal people got a break: the presidency of Donald J. Trump.
One way I think about President Trump’s leadership is that he stands in defiance to the globalists—the people that have become rich and powerful by ignoring their own citizens—on their three most important issues. On trade, he said, “It is stupid to depend on other people to make our stuff. And it’s bad for our workers. So we’re going to stamp more products with ‘Made in the USA.’” On immigration, he said, “No one consented to this level of immigration, and the Democrats are remaking our nation with outsiders rather than investing in their own communities. That is a disgrace, and we’re going to build the wall and secure our border.” On foreign policy, he said, “Normal Americans send their sons and daughters to staff our military, and we’re going to honor their sacrifice by putting America first rather than fighting every stupid war that comes along.” He’s promising the American people more self-reliance, more sovereignty, and more peace. And of course it’s the people who built this country that benefit the most from those policies.
It’s really not complicated. If a foreign country wants to subsidize cheap production, or use slave laborers in their country to make cheap products, you’ve got two choices. You can either allow that country to flood America with cheap products, destroying millions of jobs in the process. Or you can slap a tariff on those countries to protect American workers.
If people want to come across the border illegally, you have to have someone empowered to stop them.
On each of these issues, Kamala Harris stands for the people who’ve gotten rich off of American decline. Donald J. Trump stands for America’s citizens.
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