Former President Donald Trump‘s choice of Senator JD Vance as his 2024 running mate was a “really bad decision,” according to ex-Trump White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci.
Trump announced Vance as his vice presidential pick last week, less than 48 hours after surviving an assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania. Trump and Vance then officially became the GOP presidential and vice presidential nominees at the Republican National Convention during the same week.
However, rumors have been swirling that Trump or his campaign may be having regrets about choosing Vance, especially in light of Vice President Kamala Harris becoming the likely Democratic nominee following President Joe Biden‘s decision to drop out of the race and endorse her.
Trump insisted that his VP pick was “doing a fantastic job” and had been “very well received” by the public during a Thursday morning phone interview on Fox News‘ Fox & Friends. Scaramucci suggested that Trump was not being truthful during a CNN interview hours later.
“Vance is not doing a fantastic job,” Scaramucci said. “He knows that. We know that… He thinks he’s very dull. And from a casting perspective, because Donald Trump is all about casting, JD Vance is not living up to the expectations…In that 48-hour period where he was making that VP decision, I’m sure he was under a little bit of stress.”
“But this was a really bad decision for him,” he added. “As an example, if he had gone with someone like [former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations] Nikki Haley, that really would have helped him, vis-à-vis going up against Vice President Harris.”
Scaramucci went on to say that his opinions on Trump and Vance were “based on working with the man and understanding the psychology of who the president is.”
Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung mocked Scaramucci for lasting just 10 days as White House communications director, writing the following in an email to Newsweek: “We’re not going to listen to someone who barely lasted more time than an expired ham sandwich as White House communications director.”
Despite Trump’s remarks, polling suggests that Vance has not been “very well received” by the public. CNN’s senior data reporter Harry Enten pointed out during a broadcast earlier this week that Vance’s post-convention approval rating of -6 percent was the lowest of any vice presidential candidate since 1980.
Enten suggested that although vice presidential nominees are typically popular, Vance may be “dragging Trump down,” while only boosting the ex-president’s standing among the “white working-class voters” that “much every Republican wins.”
Meanwhile, a Yahoo News/YouGov poll released this week found that 38 percent of U.S. adults agree that Vance is not ready to become the president if required to do so, while just 29 percent think that he is.
Concerns have been raised about Vance’s standing among women in particular. Vance previously expressed support for a national ban on abortion and once complained that the country was being run by ” childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives.”
Update 7/25, 5:21 p.m. ET: This article has been updated to include a statement from Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
