As Sen J D Vance, R-Ohio, prepares for the vice presidential debate next week, several past statements — including a private message in which he reportedly criticised former President Donald Trump near the end of his term and a video of him linking car-seat regulations to low birthrates — came back to haunt him Friday.
Long before he became Trump’s running mate, Vance had a well-known history of criticising Trump, who he once said he feared could be “America’s Hitler.” But Vance later became a supporter and ally of Trump’s, attributing his change of heart to his appreciation of Trump’s presidency.
Vance’s explanation came under scrutiny Friday after The Washington Post reported that he had said in a private message on social media in February 2020 that Trump had “thoroughly failed to deliver on his economic populism.”
Ammar Moussa, a spokesperson for Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign, said in a statement that it was “hard to conceive of a more scathing and definitive rejection” of Trump.
The Trump campaign responded to the messages reported by the Post by noting that Vance had voted for Trump for reelection in 2020. The campaign did not dispute the accuracy or the existence of the messages, attributing them to an exchange with a consultant. (The Post did not identify the recipient.)
William Martin, a spokesperson for Vance, said in a statement that “it’s no secret” that Vance had been a “critic of President Trump in the past.” He said Vance’s criticism was not directed at Trump, but at “establishment Republicans who thwarted much of Trump’s populist economic agenda.”
The campaign also noted that Vance had said in a 2019 interview with The American Conservative that the Trump presidency had been “more of a success” than he had expected. In the same interview, Vance blamed Trump’s lack of success in office on recalcitrant Republicans in Congress.
Also on Friday, footage circulated on social media showing Vance asserting in a Senate hearing last year that car-seat regulations had driven down the number of babies born, drawing mockery from his critics.
“What I worry here is that in the name of safety improvements — and I don’t doubt that there are marginal safety improvements — we’re actually proposing a change that would make things much, much more miserable for parents for very little marginal improvement in safety,” Vance said at the hearing, which was about consumer protections in air travel.
“One thing that I really worry about, and I think both Democrats and Republicans should worry about, is we have some real demographic problems in our country,” he said. “American families aren’t having enough children. And I think there’s evidence that some of the things that we’re doing to parents is driving down the number of children that American families are having. In particular, there’s evidence that the car-seat rules that we’ve imposed — which, of course, I want kids to drive in car seats — have driven down the number of babies born in this country by over 100,000.”
The Trump campaign did not immediately provide further comment on Vance’s car-seat claim.
A recent study did estimate that costs associated with car seats had, in fact, led to at least 145,000 fewer births in the United States over four decades.
John S. Santelli, a professor of population and family health at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, questioned that idea. “As a pediatrician who studies US and global fertility, I see no scientific evidence that regulations around car seats or use of car seats reduces birthrates,” he said in an email. “They do help kids survive motor vehicle accidents.”
America’s falling birthrate has been a core concern for Vance.
In July 2021, Vance told Tucker Carlson on Fox News that it was “just a basic fact” that the country was led by a “bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives.” The Harris campaign has used the remark to cast Vance as out of touch with women, who by a significant margin favor Harris over Trump, according to polling.
Vance will have perhaps his most high-profile moment of the campaign when he joins Minnesota Gov Tim Walz, Harris’ running mate, in a CBS News debate Tuesday.