By Mayank Chhaya-
What is the return policy on a vice-presidential pick? It may not be called that in U.S. politics, but former President Donald Trump could be feeling serious buyer’s remorse in choosing Senator J D Vance as his running mate.
Perhaps he is thinking that he should have picked Nikki Haley, former South Carolina governor and his former ambassador to the United Nations instead even if at the time he did not know that President Joe Biden would step aside, and his second-in-command Kamala Harris would helm the ticket.
Compared to Vance, who has the charisma of a shirt button but far less political utility, Haley, who is fully Sikh Indian in her heritage despite having herself converted to Christianity, now seems like a particularly attractive choice. This is notwithstanding that she once described her former boss as “toxic” and lacking in “moral clarity.” But then what is a little abuse between two politicians, especially when one of them traffics in profanity?
It is hard to understand why Trump chose Vance other than the fact he rolled out his personal dignity like the red carpet for the former president. It could not have been under the trauma of an attempt on his life because he ought to have been weighing his vice-presidential options much prior to that.
There is enough in Vance’s bizarre pronouncements in the last few years to expose the Trump-Vance ticket to not just utter derision but even denunciation. It is a rich reservoir of deeply disturbing ideas. Take just one that has got him the most unvarnished attention about Americans who have no children. In a 2021 interview with Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, Vance said, “We’re effectively run in this country—via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs—by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too. How does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”
Incidentally Vance is married to Usha Chilukuri, born of Indian immigrant parents from Andhra Pradesh, with three children. It is not known what Usha Vance thought of her husband’s characterization “a bunch of childless cat ladies” and whether she might have expressed her displeasure in private.
In an interview with Megyn Kelly, Vance said, “obviously it was a sarcastic comment.”
“I’ve got nothing against cats, I’ve got nothing against dogs,” Vance told Kelly. “People are focusing so much on the sarcasm and not on the substance of what I actually said… I’m sorry, it’s true. It is true that we become anti-family. It is true that the left has become anti-child. It is simply true that it’s become way too hard to raise a family.”
That is the level of discourse perpetuated by Trump’s VP pick. His campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt posted on X, “As a new mom, my heart aches for women who are unable to bear children” and that Vance’s “words are being taken out of context and unfairly attacked.”
Leavitt then offered this context saying Vance had also said this in the same context, “A lot of people are unable to have kids for very complicated and important reasons…there are people of course for biological reasons, medical reasons that can’t have children. The target of these remarks is not them.”
Irrespective of whether it was sarcasm as he called it or had a broader context as Leavitt did, there are media reports about rumblings within Trump’s MAGA base against the choice of Vance. Trump has described him as “fantastic” so far.
There are those who feel that Trump should consider replacing Vance just as the Democrats have done with Biden. However, that could reflect on his poor judgment, something he is not given to acknowledge. However, Vance’s choice is becoming politically fraught.
It is in this context it would be interesting to watch who Harris picks as her running mate. So far Mark Kelly, a former astronaut and Navy captain as well as a junior senator from Arizona is being talked up the most. If that indeed happens, it would be a stunning contrast to Vance.