Biden Hits Vance, Says He Talks ‘Big Game About Working People’

President Joe Biden assailed Donald Trump’s selection of JD Vance as his running mate and previewed Democrats’ efforts to define the Ohio senator to voters by casting doubt on his independence and populist credentials.

“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,” Biden said in a post on X.

The selection of Vance is the latest step in what has been a meteoric rise for the venture capitalist-turned senator. Vance rocketed to attention just eight years ago when he published Hillbilly Elegy, a memoir of growing up in Rust Belt poverty that spurred a national discussion about the White working class.

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

Trump notably broke from his last running mate, former Vice President Mike Pence, over his refusal to block the certification of Biden’s election win. Protesters in the mob of Trump supporters who marched on the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 chanted “Hang Mike Pence.” 

That episode is expected to animate Democrats’ efforts to paint Vance as extreme, as they hope to reverse an election where they’re trailing according to opinion polls.

In a statement, Biden campaign chair Jennifer O’Malley Dillon said Trump tapped Vance because he “will do what Mike Pence wouldn’t on January 6: bend over backwards to enable Trump and his extreme MAGA agenda, even if it means breaking the law and no matter the harm to the American people.”

O’Malley Dillon said 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 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.

Trump said he had tapped Vance earlier Monday as the Republican National Convention got underway in Milwaukee, ending weeks of speculation as the former president sought to gin up intrigue and suspense over his pick of a running mate. 

Trump likened the process to his former reality television show The Apprentice during a weeks long decision that saw the potential contenders jockey for influence by fundraising for the president and appearing by his side — including at his Manhattan trial over hush-money payments.

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 fulfill his role. 

Shortly after the rally, Vance was among the Republicans who blamed rhetoric from 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,” Vance wrote in a post on X. “That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”

This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.