Chris Hayes laughed a lot as he bluntly assessed the state of things for Donald Trump’s running mate on Thursday, declaring, “JD Vance is not winning the weirdness issue,” ahead of a detailed look at the myriad ways the MSNBC host said Vance is making that issue worse for himself.
“Last night, Trump’s running mate went on Fox News so Laura Ingraham could do what she could for him. Vance was pitched this softball about how Republicans can better appeal to suburban women,” Hayes explained. “And then it got weird.”
Hayes then cued up the exchange, in which Ingraham asked, and this is verbatim, “Senator, one of my dear friends tonight said to me, well, all these suburban women, all these suburban women, all they care about is abortion, and they don’t understand that decision is with the states now, not banned nationally, wanted to be banned nationally, people, something wanted to be banned nationally, it’s with the states. What do you say to suburban women out there who are marinating in this propaganda?”
After an uncomfortable pause, Vance replied, “Well, first of all, I don’t buy that. Laura, I think most suburban women care about the normal things that most Americans care about.”
“The normal things,” Hayes said after the clip ended. “I would argue that most women in this country, heck, most voters think it’s perfectly normal to be concerned that some bearded politician is going to tell them what they can and can’t do with their bodies. But apparently, JD Vance knows better, even his polls consistently show that abortion rights rank among the most important issues facing Americans, and this ballot initiatives enshrining abortion rights continue to see massive support among voters, even in deep red states.”
Hayes noted that this appearance on Fox News comes after the resurfacing of “dozens of other statements that are equally as weird and alienating to normal people, from his disparaging comments about so called childless cat ladies, to his participation in a weird podcast conversation about “post menopausal women,” to his forced folksy fundraising email describing how “my mamaw never beat around the bush and neither do I.”
Hayes noted that even Trump doesn’t seem to want to be associated with Vance, citing a recent New York Times report where, when asked about the “weird” description in a meeting with donors, Trump told them “not about me, they’re saying that about JD.”
“Reassuring stuff,” Hayes joked.
“Vance’s history of being genuinely very strange has shaped the narrative of how the American public perceives him, resulting in polling that paints him as historically unpopular for vice president,” Hayes continued, citing polls backing this up.
“It’s not going great for JD Vance,” he said — and to back that up, Hayes ended the segment by showing a photograph posted on Twitter by GOP congressman Michael G. Waltz with Vance that included a newspaper headline describing how good the economy is under Joe Biden.
Watch the whole clip below: