The NPR Politics Podcast - JD Vance's Military Record & "Childless Cat Lady" Comment

Episode Date: July 29, 2024

JD Vance has been careful not to claim he served in a combat role while deployed to Iraq as a Marine. But after a Harris campaign ad claimed Vance would be "loyal to Trump, not to our country," Vance responded to the vice president directly in an attack evoking racist trope about Black women."I served in the United States Marine Corps and I built a business," Vance said. "What the hell have you done other than to collect the government check for the past 20 years?"This episode: national political correspondent Sarah McCammon, political reporter Stephen Fowler and veterans correspondent Quil Lawrence.The podcast is produced by Casey Morell and Kelli Wessinger. Our intern is Bria Suggs. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Bonjour, this is Andrea. And this is Benjamin. And we're traveling on a train at 300 kilometers an hour through the French countryside on our way to Marseille and the first event of the Olympics, USA versus France, in men's football. You mean soccer. This podcast was recorded at 1240 p.m. Eastern Time on Monday, July 29th, 2024. Things may have changed since it was recorded, but we'll be enjoying our first Olympics experience. Au revoir.

I was just in France, but I can't pronounce anything French. That was super cute. It was so cute. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover the presidential campaign. I'm Stephen McCammon. I cover the presidential campaign. I'm Stephen Fowler. I also cover the campaign. And I'm Quill Lawrence. I cover veterans in the VA.

Senator J.D. Vance has had a week on the campaign trail as former President Trump's new running mate. And today we want to take a look at his message so far and how it's been landing with voters. Stephen, you've been following Vance. What sorts of things is he talking about on the campaign trail? So Sarah, there's a little bit of an introduction period going on, even though J.D. Vance is a United States senator. He's relatively new to the gig. And so a lot of his speeches has been a little bit of a reintroduction of who he is, his backstory, and what he brings to this Republican ticket. Now, just for the brief recap, he was born in Ohio. He rocketed to notoriety through

this memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, that painted a picture of a broken middle America, an Appalachia ravaged by opioids and addiction and people losing their jobs. And he turned that into a bit of notoriety and is now a United States senator from Ohio. And he's been one of Trump's biggest offenders in Congress. And now on the campaign trail, his message, in addition to, hi, I'm J.D. Vance, is, and I'm here to be the torchbearer for Donald Trump's policies moving forward. Which, of course, is quite a reversal from several years ago when Hillbilly Elegy came out and Vance was quite a critic of Trump. Absolutely. It's a 180 that some people might say is a little bit hypocritical, but really shows the way the Republican Party is now under Donald Trump. It's not what you say in the past. I mean, Vance has also been telling people he's changed. He said

all of these things about Trump before he was elected. But in the four years Donald Trump was in office, and then the three plus years Joe Biden's been president, he's seen the light and had a change of heart. And so, you know, some people might say that's a weakness, but Vance is really using it to his strength of saying, look, even I was wrong about what Donald Trump means. Now, Quill, another important part of that bio that Stephen just fleshed out for Senator Vance is his military service. It's part of his resume, something he's campaigned on and written about. He was a Marine, we know. But what exactly was his role?

Yeah, Vance went to Iraq during the year 2005. He was a civil affairs marine. So basically he was a military journalist and escorting journalists around Iraq. And so some people are making a point of this that he was not a grunt. He was what military people call a pogue, a person other than grunt. And that maybe Donald Trump thought he was picking a combat veteran who would have that sort of a credential. But there's a civilian-military divide in this country, and very few people have first-hand experience or even family experience of military service.

And I think most veterans, they don't really care what role you had with the proviso that as long as you're not bragging about doing something you didn't do. And Vance hasn't done that. He was in Iraq in a very tough year in Iraq. I can tell you personally that it was a very violent year. And a lot of the combat in Iraq and Afghanistan wasn't really any sort of a frontline combat gunfight. It was convoys getting blown up and mortars dropping anywhere on anyone. So I think veterans give Vance credit for going and, as he says, serving honorably. And he has not been saying that he did anything other than what he did, which is go over and serve honorably.

Now, Stephen, what are you hearing from Vance on the trail when he talks about his time in the military? To Quill's point, there's not any embellishment of his service or trying to imply his role was something different than it was. But it has been something that has come up in his role as an attack dog against Vice President Kamala Harris, who is very soon going to be the Democratic presidential nominee replacing Joe Biden. And he said this a couple times on the trail where he implies that his service in the military kind of gave him more experience than Kamala Harris. Here's what he said on the trail. I want to say something about our likely opponent, Kamala Harris, because, you know, she said a couple of days ago that I showed no loyalty to the United States, that I have

no loyalty to the United States. Well, you know, I don't know Kamala. I served in the United States Marine Corps and I built a business. What the hell have you done other than collect a government check for the past 20 years? So the implication there, which some have pointed out as being a racist dog whistle of a black woman, you know, being on welfare, is trying to say that his service in the Marine Corps and his business ethic is better and that, you and that Kamala Harris has been just somebody who hasn't really worked that hard, but she was a prosecutor. She was a United States

senator. She is the vice president of the United States. But it also gets at the kind of flat footedness of Vance's rollout coming at a time when it was kind of supposed to be running up the score against President Joe Biden and his selection was just further dominance of the Republican Party. But now with him out and Harris as the likely nominee, it's a completely different strategy. All right, we'll take a quick break and we'll have more in just a moment. And we're back. Quill, part of the reason we're parsing out Vance's military service record is just because of how prominent military service has been in both Democratic and Republican presidential politics in the past. It used to be very common for presidents to have had a record of military service and often combat experience.

But it's been a long time since we've had a president who's been in combat. Can you just quickly remind us of the history there? Sure. I mean, I can list some presidential candidates who had combat experience in the last 30-odd years, and they will all be losers. So we have to go back to George H. W. Bush, who served in World War II. We did elect him president, but only once. And then he lost to Bill Clinton, someone who avoided serving in Vietnam. And then Bob Dole, another World War II combat wounded veteran, lost to Bill Clinton, who avoided serving in Vietnam. And then Al Gore, who did serve in Vietnam, but also in a journalistic role.

He was in the military, but as a military journalist, just like J.D. Vance. And he then lost to George W. Bush, someone who avoided serving in Vietnam. And then John Kerry, who had several Purple Hearts from serving in Vietnam, lost to George W. Bush, who avoided serving in Vietnam. And then John McCain, who was a war hero from Vietnam, lost to, well, Barack Obama was too young to have served in Vietnam. And then Hillary Clinton versus Trump. Well, Trump had avoided service, but it's not really a fair comparison because Hillary wasn't subject to the draft. But then we get Biden, Trump, and both of them avoided service in Vietnam. So essentially, Americans say that they like veterans and they value that, and maybe

they do, but they don't really vote veterans into office, into the presidency. Now, Stephen, we cannot finish this conversation about Vance without talking about something else that's gotten very big online and also in the headlines. And that is, of course, the now famous or maybe infamous comments Vance made several years ago about the vice president referring to her as a childless cat lady. So many memes about this. What did Vance say and how is it being received? So there has been a lot of past comments that J.D. Vance has made that's been resurfaced now that he's the vice presidential nominee for the Republican Party. One of those is rhetoric around like democratic policies around families and kind of Republican policies around families. And there was this comment made about childless cat ladies

as a derogatory term for women who vote for democratic politicians and have more progressive views, but don't in this view contribute as much to society because they don't have children. And it has not been received well, to say the least. It's part of this rollout of Vance that has just seen negative headline after negative headline after negative headline. It's been attacked by many Democrats, from Harris to people like Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who's on the VP shortlist, as just an example of Republicans being weird about policies and people and trying to cater to women and other people who vote, whether they have children or not. And it's a thing that's led to J.D. Vance's favorability ratings among voters starting out very, very

negative. I mean, there have been many polls and surveys done from a variety of pollsters who find that more people have negative views about J.D. Vance than positive views. And even though it's still early on in his time as the VP nominee, it's probably going to be something hard to come back from. Yeah, and that's even true on his home turf, right, in the Midwest and Appalachia, which is kind of why he was probably brought on the ticket, right, to try to woo some of those swing voters in key states like Wisconsin and maybe even Pennsylvania. Well, and that's actually some of this mismatch we're seeing. J.D. Vance arguably was not brought onto the ticket to woo those swing voters, to appeal to the suburbanites and to be a more moderating message on the ticket. He's been around and the sort of reputation of rhetoric he's done. But J.D. Vance is not Donald Trump, and this is a case of that difference. Now, Trump was asked on a call that I was on last week with reporters

whether he essentially regrets his pick of J.D. Vance, and he said that he didn't, that he was catching on. But as we've been discussing, Vance did have a wobbly first week, it seems like. For both of you, what will you be watching from here? Yeah, I mean, in terms of his veteran status, we've been interviewing people about this. And one thing someone said is he's done a very good job so far about mentioning his military status, but not overdoing it, not saying he did anything he didn't, doing a fine job. But one of the vets I talked to was saying, you're up there in the spotlight and you're in front of a microphone and all these people. And there might be a temptation to start talking like you represent all veterans.

And that would be something to resist because that's where you could really get yourself into trouble. But that said, Vance hasn't done that. Yes, Sarah. Something I'm looking at as this race begins to solidify and as we know who Kamala Harris will pick as her vice presidential nominee that will be a contrast with Vance, is how this race will shape up. I mean, the Democratic National Convention is in just a couple of weeks, so there's going to be a lot of focus on Democrats and the contrast there. So what is Vance going to be doing in the meantime? I know this week he's traveling to some of the swing states that previously looked like they might have been buttoned up for Republicans, like Arizona and Nevada. So it's going to be interesting to watch him respond to this time in the spotlight and to see if he can avoid having more childless cat lady news cycles.

All right, well, much to watch in the weeks to come, but we'll leave it there for right now. Please follow the show if you haven't, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover the campaign. I'm Stephen Fowler. I also cover the campaign. And I'm Quill Lawrence. I cover veterans in the VA. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.