JD Vance book tour undercuts Trump's midterms message

[marmar]

JD Vance book tour undercuts Trump’s midterms message
The vice president’s criticism of traditional Republican economics complicates Trump’s attacks on Democrats

By Sophia Tesfaye
Senior Writer
Published July 11, 2026 9:20AM (EDT)


(Salon) Donald Trump wants the November midterms to be a referendum on “communism.” His vice president has other ideas. JD Vance, on tour to promote his latest book, is keeping the focus on the failures of unfettered capitalism.

As Trump travels the country warning that newly ascendant democratic socialists — figures like New York’s Zohran Mamdani, Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier — represent an existential threat to the United States, Vance has spent much of the summer making a remarkably different argument: that the Republican Party should embrace a more activist government capable of reshaping the economy in the interests of workers and families. When taken separately, neither message is surprising; both neatly highlight the core contradiction of the Republican Party in the Trump era.

On his book tour, Vance has built a case that should sound oddly familiar to anyone who has heard the Democratic Socialists of America’s talking points. He has told audiences that the country needs to “undo 40 years of failed economic policy” — a pointed reference, because four decades back means the Reagan era. Vance has argued that the Republican Party should abandon the deregulatory playbook of the late Milton Friedman, the intellectual godfather of Reagan-era supply-side economics whose ideas were, for decades, treated as holy scripture by the GOP establishment. They provided the moral and intellectual justification for cutting taxes on the rich, gutting the social safety net and dismantling corporate regulations.

....(snip)....

This is precisely the kind of argument Trump is trying to convince voters is dangerous by deploying the specter of communism, a tried-and-true tactic in GOP politics for nearly 100 years. Reacting to the slate of democratic socialists that swept congressional primaries in New York, Colorado and Pennsylvania, the president announced that “the communists are finally making their move.” A few days later, at the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s policy conference, he called DSA winners “animals” and falsely claimed that “assassinations of those who oppose them is a very important element of their ideology.” Democratic socialists, Trump has told crowds, are the single greatest threat the republic has faced in 250 years, and he has warned that these “godless communists” will target Christianity specifically.

Predictably, Vance’s leftward drift on economic rhetoric has triggered an absolute meltdown among the conservative establishment. ....................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2026/07/11/jd-vance-book-tour-undercuts-trumps-midterms-message/

[Raven123]

1. Is JD divorcing Trump or is this a trial separation?

Either way, he’s a snake and cannot be trusted.