Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) may pose “the greatest threat” to Vice President Kamala Harris in a debate setting, according to Harris’ own former communications director. Ashley Etienne made the comments during a June appearance on CNN, prior to former President Donald Trump’s official announcement naming the 39-year-old Ohio senator as his running mate. WATCH: Kamala Harris’s former Comms director, Ashley Etienne, says she thinks JD Vance “would pose the greatest threat” to Harris in a VP debate Comes as Trump and his team are considering how each prospective running mate would fare on a debate stage with the VP pic.twitter.com/pSxJEFOHAw — Alayna Treene (@alaynatreene) June 17, 2024 “I think J.D. Vance would pose the greatest threat to Kamala Harris,” Etienne told host Laura Coates. “I mean, he’s an incredible debater. I think he has this quality that makes him seem palpable to that 1 to 2 percent that actually might vote or that’s undecided, that will actually pay attention to the debates because most people don’t pay attention to the debates.” “I think he’s just got a quality about him where he’s super smart and sharp and quick-witted. I just think they’d like it, I think it’s going to be a challenge to see the two of them face-to-face. I mean, maybe it’s just me, but I think he’s gonna be the greatest threat,” she continued. Republican strategist Noelle Nikpour made a similar comment during an MSNBC appearance a week later, saying, “If I were Kamala Harris, I probably would not want to go up against J.D. Vance.” “J.D. Vance really is an expert on policy, he’s Ivy League educated, he knows policy backwards and forwards. I probably would not, if I were Kamala Harris, out of all the picks that they’ve listed, probably would not want to go up against J.D. Vance … He’s very smart.” A guest on MSNBC weighs in on which Republican she thinks would pose the greatest threat to Kamala Harris in the VP Debate: “If I were Kamala Harris, I would probably not want to go up against JD Vance.” pic.twitter.com/rd8hnXyJLr — Henry Rodgers (@henryrodgersdc) June 25, 2024 The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin took the opposite position, claiming that Harris was likely waiting impatiently for the match-up: “Kamala Harris waiting for the debate is like a kid eyeing a candy store.” CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP But critics were not so sure, and quickly offered their thoughts. “Tulsi Gabbard smoked her ass so hard in the debate Kamala dropped out a few weeks later and never made it to Iowa — her debate performances were so bad they have reached mythology in political history. I swear to God — how the hell do you stay employed in media?!?” Meghan McCain responded. Tulsi Gabbard smoked her ass so hard in the debate Kamala dropped out a few weeks later and never made it to Iowa – her debate performances were so bad they have reached mythology in political history. I swear to God – how the hell do you stay employed in media?!? https://t.co/BSmKaUqJ75 — Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) July 15, 2024 “Like a kid with no money eyeing a closed candy store,” Karol Markowicz clarified. Like a kid with no money eyeing a closed candy store. https://t.co/4Vliumb0Zg — Karol Markowicz (@karol) July 16, 2024 “The left pretending to be constantly excited for and in awe of Kamala Harris is genuinely embarrassing,” another posted. The left pretending to be constantly excited for and in awe of Kamala Harris is genuinely embarrassing. https://t.co/d7xmt8xb2t — DemocraticDespotism (@DemocraticDesp1) July 15, 2024 And Megyn Kelly, whose voice can be heard on The Daily Wire’s “Mr. Birchum,” just had one question: “Who’s going to tell her?” Who’s going to tell her? https://t.co/oB9kKNCTjc — Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) July 15, 2024

We now have a vice presidential nominee from Donald J. Trump: Senator J.D. Vance from Ohio. It’s an audacious, confident pick from the former president of the United States. He’s making that pick because he believes he’s winning. It is that simple.  There’s a reason that Trump believes he’s winning. The swing state polling from YouGov finds that Trump is currently up nine in Arizona, five in Wisconsin, six in Georgia, three in Pennsylvania, two in Michigan, five in Nevada, and four in North Carolina. That is an extraordinary set of polls for Trump. And Michigan is the only one of those polls that seems to possibly even be within spitting distance.  This is not a strategic pick. This is not the sort of pick that is designed to win Virginia, which is what Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) likely would have done. It’s not a pick that’s designed to do outreach to Hispanics, as choosing Marco Rubio (R-FL) would have done. It is a pick that may be designed to shore up the blue wall in favor of red in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, but more importantly, I think for Donald Trump, it’s designed to enshrine his policy legacy as a shift away from traditional conservatism. In Trump’s statement announcing the pick, he concluded. “J.D. has had a very successful business career in Technology and Finance, and now, during the Campaign will be strongly focused on the people he fought so brilliantly for, the American Workers and Farmers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota, and far beyond.”  That last sentence is the one that matters the most. Trump was name-checking Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin — three states he is hoping to win with this pick. But the truth is he actually doesn’t need Vance to win those states. In fact, the last time Trump ran in 2020, Vance was running for the Senate in Ohio. Trump actually outran Vance. Vance underperformed Trump. So the pick is not really about those states. WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show Vance is quite smart and articulate; he’s an excellent writer. That, along with the fact he has become a Trump loyalist and an absolute bulldog when it comes to any debate, is presumably why Trump picked him. J.D. Vance is likely to clock Kamala Harris into next week in any debate. There’s a contrast with Vance. The central thesis of his bestselling “Hillbilly Elegy” was that tons of people in the middle of the country had been left behind. He wrote in “Hillbilly Elegy”:  If you believe that hard work pays off then you work hard. If you think it’s hard to get ahead, even when you try it, why try at all? Similarly, when people do fail, this mindset allows them to look outward. I once ran into an old acquaintance in a Middletown bar who told me that he had recently quit his job because he was sick of waking up early. I later saw him complaining on Facebook about the Obama economy and how it affected his life. I don’t doubt the Obama economy has affected many, but this man is assuredly not among them. His status in life is directly attributable to the choices he’s made and his life will improve only through better decisions. But for him to make better choices, he needs to live in an environment that forces him to ask some questions about himself. There’s a cultural movement in the white working class to blame problems on society or the government, and that movement gains adherents by the day. Yet that contrasts with his industrial policy. He’s very much on the interventionist economic side of the Republican aisle. He favors government interventionism in terms of subsidies and regulations, very much like President Trump supposedly did back in 2016 — although Trump didn’t actually end up implementing a lot of that. I would assume that if Vance were president, he would implement those kinds of policies. This is one of the areas he differs widely from traditional economic, free market conservatism. On trade, for example, he has been very much in favor of tariffs. He suggested a much more aggressive approach to protecting domestic manufacturers if Trump wins a second term. Trump was aggressive on tariff policy with regard to China, largely for national security reasons. But Vance is much more aggressive in terms of actual domestic protection for manufacturers. He told me in an interview I did with him in 2021, “But we also have this very discrete idea that while the government shouldn’t be controlling the American economy, we should have as a policy consensus, a view about what we want the economy to be, what we want the market to be able to produce, and to put a little bit of a thumb on the scale to make that possible.” On a generalized level, I obviously disagree with that, as I told him. I’m a more free-market advocate than Vance is, but he’s an excellent and intelligent expositor of his position on these issues. On economics, he’s made common cause from time to time with Senator Elizabeth Warren, and he has cheered on Federal Trade Commissioner Chair Lina Khan. On economics, Vance is very heterodox. He has signaled his possible willingness to hike taxes in some cases. He has spoken out in favor of breaking up some of Big Tech. That is somewhat of an open debate inside the Republican Party right now. On foreign policy, I would say Vance is not so much an isolationist, but more of a realist. That takes a rather interesting turn when it comes to the two major hot conflicts in the world right now — one in Israel and one in Ukraine. He looks at those two conflicts and sees heavy American interest in Israel. He does not see heavy American interest in Ukraine; he is famously anti-Ukraine aid. He wrote a piece in April in which he cited three reasons why there shouldn’t be any more aid to Ukraine: One: Ukraine will not be able to do with the aid what they need to do Two: The lack of American military capacity and the notion we are going to be overdoing it; that essentially if we ship them more military aid, then we are emptying our own stockpiles Three: We should be spending money at home, not abroad I think the last idea is the most flimsy because that’s always true for any conflict. Any conflict could be used as an excuse for not having a foreign policy. I also think it ignores the actual American interests in, say, preventing Russia from taking over the world’s breadbasket and then putting itself on the borders of a multiplicity of NATO’s states. If you don’t want an arms race in Europe, then presumably, a level of aid sufficient to allow Ukraine to repel Russia from a full-scale win would be the thing you’re looking for. Vance said, “I got to be honest with you; I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.” That is a very strong statement. But he also said something that sounds very much like what Trump or I would say, which is that you support Ukraine up to the point peace can be reached with an eye on the off-ramp. When it comes to Israel, however, he does see strong American interests. At the Quincy Institute, he spelled out what he thinks America’s interests are in maintaining enough aid for Israel to be able to destroy Hamas and then to broker a peace deal with the Saudis that would create a regional security bloc. He stated: I think we have a real opportunity to ensure that Israel is an ally in the true sense, that it’s going to pursue their interests. And sometimes those interests totally overlap with the United States, and that’s totally reasonable. But they are fundamentally self-sufficient. And I think the way that we get there in Israel is actually by combining the Abraham Accords approach with the defeat of Hamas. That gets us to a place where Israel and the Sunni nations can play a regional counterweight to Iran. Again, we don’t want a broader regional war. We don’t want to get involved in a broader regional war. The best way to do that is to ensure that Israel, with the Sunni nations, can actually police their own region of the world. And that allows us to spend less time and less resources on the Middle East and focus more on East Asia.  That is a very solid realist case: the point of American aid is to foment American interests. On immigration, he very much mirrors Trump. Just last week, he slammed Jerome Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, on illegal immigration and its impact on the economy. He noted that if you aren’t increasing wages, then you can’t undercut the labor base. I don’t think that’s a particularly great argument against immigration. There is a very strong cultural argument: that you actually have to screen people so you don’t have a massive influx not engaged in American taxpaying, American culture, or the Declaration of Independence. But Vance’s perspective obviously matches up well with the perspective of President Trump. The question I’ve always asked about Trumpism is this: Is there a Trumpism or is there only Trump? Vance is the best exponent of Trumpism — if there is, in fact, a Trumpism.

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The owner of a home remodeling business spoke about the financial stress that the Biden-Harris economy has put on Americans, including himself, in remarks Monday night at the Republican National Convention. “During the Trump boom, we were thriving. Under Biden, we are surviving,” declared Benjamin Josephs, who now owns the business his father started in 1972, told a convention hall audience in Milwaukee that included former President Donald Trump, who was officially nominated earlier. Many clients are reducing the scope and amount of home remodeling projects because of inflation and the state of the economy, Josephs said. Consequently, the slowdown has affected his family, he said. “I’ve had to lower my margins—and I mean lower them,” Josephs said. “I’m now barely making payroll, and our family just has enough to live on.” He noted that it’s heartbreaking for parents such as himself to have to tell their children when they ask for something: “We can’t afford it.” “We didn’t have to say those words under Donald Trump when he was president,” said Josephs, also a Michigan delegate at the RNC. “That’s because Donald Trump is a businessman, not a crooked career politician.” Trump knows what business owners require to succeed since he has owned and run businesses too, Josephs said. “He knew that we could create millions of great jobs if given the chance, and we did,” Josephs said. Trump’s tax and regulation cuts enabled American entrepreneurs to expand their businesses, he added.  “We need him back in the White House,” Josephs concluded. “With his leadership, and our help, we will make America affordable again, wealthy again, and great again.” The post Owner of Home Remodeling Business Tells GOP Delegates About Economic Hardships appeared first on The Daily Signal.

MILWAUKEE—Radio talk-show host and former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino isn’t keen to head back into federal government service, but if former President Donald Trump were to win a second term and asked him to, he said he would consider it. Bongino sat down with The Daily Signal on Tuesday at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he addressed some speculation about whether he would serve as director of the FBI in a Republican administration. Bongino laughed at the idea, but expressed himself honored and flattered by it. .@dbongino on whether he would serve as the next director of the FBI: "Only if President Trump personally wanted it. I've never envisioned myself going back into government again, ever…if he called I'd have to consider anything." pic.twitter.com/xeQ1ykNMiZ— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) July 16, 2024 “Only if President Trump personally wanted it,” he said. “Him. If he wanted it. I’ve never envisioned myself going back in government again, ever, ever, ever. I can’t say that enough.” “But I wouldn’t even take a salary for this stuff,” he continued. “There comes a time where your country matters more. I never got into this stuff for the money, or the glory, or any crap like that. It just happened … if he called I’d have to consider anything.” Bongino described the security breach at Trump’s Pennsylvania campaign rally as a “catastrophic failure” of the Secret Service. Countersnipers fatally shot the gunman, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, after one of his shots grazed the former president’s right ear, bloodying him. Trump announced Monday that Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, was his vice presidential running mate. The former president made an appearance on Monday evening at the Republican National Convention, where he appeared serious and emotional as he greeted his sons as well as Tucker Carlson, Vance, and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La. The post Dan Bongino Would Consider Serving as FBI Director If Trump Offered Him the Job appeared first on The Daily Signal.

MILWAUKEE—Former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino tore into his former employer on Tuesday for what he says was its mishandling of security at the Pennsylvania campaign rally where a would-be assassin shot former President Donald Trump late Saturday afternoon. Bongino, now a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host, sat down with The Daily Signal on Tuesday at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he called for “mass resignations” from the Secret Service following the shooting. Authorities fatally shot the gunman, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, as he lay on the roof of a nearby building from which he shot at Trump. One of the bullets grazed the former president in the ear, bloodying Trump. Bongino specifically noted that authorities spotted the shooter behaving furtively 26 minutes before the shots were fired. “Why was President Trump allowed on the stage?” he asked rhetorically. Bongino also questioned a claim from the director of the Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle, who said that the Secret Service hadn’t placed a countersniper team on the roof of the manufacturing building 130 years away where the gunman lay due to the slope of the roof. “Well, the shooter didn’t seem to have any problem with the slope of that roof,” Bongino exclaimed, pointing out that the Secret Service had allowed the shooter a “clean line of sight,” suggesting it could have placed something as simple as a campaign banner at the roof’s edge to block a potential shooter’s line of sight. “People should be criminally investigated for what happened here,” the talk-show host and podcaster said. Asked whether he trusts the FBI to investigate the shooting, he laughed and responded: “That’s like asking an alcoholic if you trust Jose Cuervo. No, I absolutely don’t. I hope they prove me wrong. I’m also a realist, and I realize the FBI has some decent people. I worked with them.” “The management right now is an abomination,” he added, “and what I’m afraid of is, even if you get a bunch of good rank-and-file investigators who find out something serious—I don’t what that is or could be; I don’t put out stuff I can’t back up. I don’t trust [FBI Director] Christopher Wray to tell people the truth. I just don’t.” .@dbongino on whether he would serve as the next director of the FBI: "Only if President Trump personally wanted it. I've never envisioned myself going back into government again, ever…if he called I'd have to consider anything." pic.twitter.com/xeQ1ykNMiZ— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) July 16, 2024 Bongino joked that if the shooter had been wearing a “Moms for Liberty” hat, “believe me, they’d have every story right now.” “The guy’s parents would be in the gulag,” he said of Crooks. “I hope they prove me wrong,” he said again, adding, “I don’t say things I can’t back up, and until I see some evidence they’re hiding stuff, I’ll reserve opinion, but their track record, I mean, can we just be honest? It’s from horrible to atrocious.” Pressed as to whether he thinks the shooter was acting on his own or not, Bongino declined to speculate without confirmation, but he pointed to the fact that the 20-year-old gunman supposedly had no social media profile. “I find that odd,” he said. “But I doubt [that it was an] inside job. There are so many people that would have to be read in on that plan. There’s always a leaker … but I don’t discount anything. After ‘Spygate’ and Russia collusion, it would be irresponsible for me to do the opposite, too, and go, ‘Oh, that didn’t happen.’” The post EXCLUSIVE: Ex-Agent Dan Bongino Slams Secret Service for Ignoring Threats to Trump’s Life appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Secret Service Boss: The Buck Stops Here But I Still Ain't Quitting