Trump’s VP Pick: Vance’s Record Speaks for Itself

July 2024

 

What you need to know about J.D. Vance

Vance has a long record of extreme foreign policy views

  • ‘Go It Alone’ Foreign Policy: His efforts to abandon Ukraine have failed for the time being – but Vance isn’t deterred. “If Vance gets his way, cutting off U.S. funding to Ukraine will be only the first step in a much broader reorientation of the U.S.’s role in the global order. Vance is deeply skeptical of the so-called rules-based international order” – the system of laws, norms and alliances that have kept America safe and prosperous for more than seventy years. Much like America’s greatest adversaries, Russia and China, Vance would instead prefer to chart a new, more nationalistic and isolationist system where the United States would ‘go it alone’ instead of working alongside our allies.

  • Abandoning Our Allies in Their Time of Need: Earlier this year, Vance led efforts in Congress to derail a bipartisan security package that would deliver the arms and ammunition Ukraine needs to defend itself against Russia’s illegal invasion. Instead of standing strongly alongside our ally, Vance has proposed that Ukraine should willingly give up its sovereign territory in order to placate Putin.

  • Pro-Putin & Weak on Russia: Vance voiced support for Donald Trump’s unprecedented proposal to allow Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” against our NATO allies in Europe – comments that have “split members of his own party and stoked fears about what a second term in the White House could mean for the transatlantic security alliance” that has kept us safe for decades.” A Trump-Vance ticket would spell disaster for NATO – and delight Vladimir Putin, who would like nothing more than to see the downfall of history’s most effective military alliance.

  • Chaos at Our Southern Border: Vance joined MAGA Republicans in defeating a bipartisan immigration bill that would have provided needed resources to secure the border, fix our broken immigration system, and combat illicit opioid trafficking. Vance did so because Donald Trump believed that a political compromise to strengthen border security could benefit Democrats politically. Vance has also proudly supported Trump’s reckless plan to use military force against Mexico – a new conflict that would cost billions of taxpayer dollars and put American servicemembers’ lives at risk.

  • Admiration for Autocrats: Vance believes that the United States “could learn from” authoritarian Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orban’s decision to heavily regulate universities to control what is taught. Vance said that there needs to be a “political solution” that ensures that American colleges are teaching a more conservative curriculum that fits with his reckless, nationalist worldview.

Conspiracies Abound – Vance’s Tin Foil MAGA Hat

  • Election Denialism: Like other Trump loyalists, Vance has proudly maintained that the 2020 election “was stolen from Trump,” despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Flying in the face of reality, Vance has repeatedly claimed that Trump’s loss was due to “a big-tech conspiracy” engineered by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and “people voting illegally on a large-scale basis.” By spouting discredited conspiracy theories, Vance undermines faith in our electoral system and is helping to pave the way for future catastrophes like the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol.

  • Espoused White Supremacist Ideology: Vance has repeatedly amplified the racist “Great Replacement Theory,” a paranoid theory of “white extinction” that has been cited by multiple mass shooters to justify their killing of minorities in the United States. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Vance’s theory “is inherently white supremacist. It depends on stoking fears that a non-white population, which the theory’s proponents characterize as ‘inferior,’ will displace a white majority.”

  • Baseless Conspiracy Theorist: In an interview with a far-right outlet that frequently traffics in conspiracy theories, Vance made a shocking and unfounded claim that Joe Biden was seeking to “punish the people who didn’t vote for him” by facilitating the delivery of deadly fentanyl into Ohio. “If you wanted to kill a bunch of MAGA voters in the middle of the heartland, how better than to target them and their kids with this deadly fentanyl? … It does look intentional.”