Biden calls Republican vice-presidential pick J.D. Vance a ‘clone of Trump’

Joint Base Andrews, Maryland – US President Joe Biden on July 15 dismissed Donald Trump’s

newly picked running mate J.D. Vance

as a “clone” of the Republican former president.

“A clone of Trump on the issues,” Mr Biden told reporters before flying to Nevada when asked about the Ohio senator. “I don’t see any difference.”

In a post on X, the US leader also assailed Mr Vance, questioning the Republican No. 2’s populist credentials and saying the ticket would be economically harmful to middle-class American families.

“Here’s the deal about J.D. Vance. He talks a big game about working people. But now, he and Trump want to raise taxes on middle-class families while pushing more tax cuts for the rich,” Mr Biden wrote.

The President’s remarks were just one part of a full-court press deployed by his campaign after Trump’s selection was announced on July 15, as aides and allies seek to define Mr Vance – who is largely unknown to many voters beyond Hillbilly Elegy, his memoir of growing up in Rust Belt poverty that spurred a national discussion about the white working class.

Democrats are eager to paint the venture capitalist turned senator as both subservient to Trump and the elite, in a bid to blunt the populist appeal he has cultivated during his career in Washington.

Mr Vance, 39, also marks a potential generational shift for Republicans – decades younger than Trump, 78, and Mr Biden, who at 81 is the oldest US president in history. 

“Trump’s V-P pick is great news for the wealthiest Americans,” Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts told reporters in a conference call on July 15. “With Trump-Vance, Social Security and Medicare cuts will bear down on seniors like an avalanche.”

The President’s campaign also noted Trump’s falling out with his last running mate, former vice-president Mike Pence, over his refusal to block the certification of Mr Biden’s 2020 election win. Protesters in the mob of Trump supporters who marched on the US Capitol on Jan 6, 2021, chanted “hang Mike Pence”.

Biden campaign chair Jennifer O’Malley Dillon said Trump tapped Mr Vance because he “will do what Mike Pence wouldn’t on Jan 6: bend over backwards to enable Trump and his extreme Maga (Make America Great Again) agenda, even if it means breaking the law”.

Ms O’Malley Dillon said Mr Vance would “make it his mission to enact Trump’s Project 2025 agenda at the expense of American families”, citing a blueprint for the former president’s return to power being drafted by some of his closest allies that calls for stacking federal agencies with loyalists and enacting socially conservative policies. 

Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison said in a statement that Mr Vance “championed and enabled Trump’s worst policies for years”.

“Let’s be clear: A Trump-Vance ticket would undermine our democracy, our freedoms and our future,” he said.

Debate challenge

Ms Warren said current Vice-President Kamala Harris was eager to debate the new Republican selection. The Biden campaign has already accepted a proposal from CBS News for a potential debate, while Trump has sought to encourage a debate on the more conservative Fox News.

“I’ve known her for over 15 years while she’s been in every kind of fight on behalf of working families,” Ms Warren said of Ms Harris. “She doesn’t give an inch and she has the better end of the argument.”

Ms Harris reached out to Mr Vance and left a message to congratulate him on his selection and encourage him to accept the CBS News debate, a Biden campaign official said.

Trump likened the process of picking his vice-presidential candidate to his former reality television show The Apprentice during a weeks-long decision that saw the potential contenders jockey for influence by fund-raising for the former US president and appearing by his side – including at his Manhattan trial over hush-money payments.

Mr Vance’s selection comes just two days after

Trump survived a failed assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania

– where he was wounded after a bullet grazed his ear. That incident was a grave reminder of the importance of the vice-president, who would assume the duties of the Oval Office if the president were killed or unable to fulfil his role. 

Shortly after the rally, Mr Vance was among the Republicans who blamed rhetoric from Mr Biden and Democrats for the assassination attempt.

“The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” Mr Vance wrote in a post on X. “That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.” BLOOMBERG, AFP