đ¨ This special, five-edition week of PN is made possible by paid subscribers. If you arenât one already, please sign up to support our independent journalism. đ¨
Donald Trump is a scam artist. He promises voters everything and delivers almost nothing. Thatâs worked for him in the past, but Trumpâs current running mate, JD Vance, has proven an unreliable partner in the effort to gaslight voters.
Vance too often gives the game away, cementing positions on politically sensitive issues, sometimes in direct contradiction to Trump and often in a way that falls on the wrong side of public opinion and creates political problems for Republicans.
Trump was roundly mocked for admitting during his trainwreck debate with Kamala Harris that he only had âconcepts of a planâ for replacing the Affordable Care Act. But that comment reflects his overall approach to most complex policies, from healthcare to foreign policy: He blusters that heâll fix everything and fast, but never offers details, because the con doesnât work otherwise. Once you get into specifics about the Nigerian princeâs dilemma, it all falls apart.
Vance, by contrast, has gone out of his way to flesh out Trumpâs potential plans to disastrous effect. Heâs a living breathing Project 2025 manual.
Vance creates a preexisting problem
The last thing the Trump campaign wants is for healthcare to become a prominent issue in this election. Itâs a proven loser for Republicans, but Vance tap-danced on this third rail during a recent interview with Kristen Welker on Meet the Press.
First, Vance claimed Trump graciously built upon the ACA rather than trying to destroy it. This is a blatant lie. Trump tried to repeal the ACA and failed when Republican Sens. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and John McCain voted with Democrats to preserve the law. Trump held a grudge against the three, especially McCain, throughout his presidency.
It makes sense that a liar like Trump would want to rewrite the history of that episode. Barack Obamaâs signature health care legislation is incredibly popular: A KFF healthcare tracking poll from May found that 62 percent of US adults hold a positive view of the ACA while just 37 percent hold a negative one. The ACAâs protections for preexisting conditions remains the most popular part of the legislation.
A note from Aaron: Working with brilliant contributors like Stephen takes resources. To support this work, please click the button below and become a paid subscriber.
Kamala Harris regularly points out that Trump and his stooges have repeatedly tried to end the ACA and would do it again. Trump keeps his position deliberately vague. Heâs mentioned âseeking alternativesâ to the ACA, which he disparaged at the debate as âlousy healthcare.â
âIf we can come up with a plan that's going to cost our people, our population less money, and be better healthcare than Obamacare, then I would absolutely do it,â he said. âBut until then I'd run it as good as it can be run.â
Serving word salads isnât simply Trumpâs favored debate tactic â itâs also how he discusses policy. But for some reason, Vance thinks itâs helpful to actually explain those policies in such a way that even the dumbest person knows theyâre getting screwed.
On Meet the Press, a smug Vance told Welker that Trumpâs ACA âalternativeâ is âactually quite straightforwardâ and would âmake sure that preexisting coverage conditions are covered.â But he wouldnât leave it there. He kept talking, which rarely works well for him.
Hereâs a transcript of Vanceâs remarks (emphasis ours â video below the transcript):
âYou also want to implement some deregulatory agenda so that people can choose a health care plan that fits them. A young American doesnât have the same health care needs as a 65-year-old American. A 65-year-old American in good health has much different health care needs than a 65-year-old American with a chronic condition. We want to make sure everybody is covered, but the best way to do that is to actually promote some more choice in our health care system and not have a one-size-fits-all approach that puts a lot of people into the same insurance pools, into the same risk pools, that actually makes it harder for people to make the right choices for their families.â
By invoking a âderegulatory agenda,â Vance is pitching a return to the bad old days when people with preexisting conditions couldnât get coverage. Harris put this in personal terms during her debate with Trump: "I don't have to tell the people watching tonight, you remember what that was like? Remember when an insurance company could deny [coverage] if a child had asthma, if someone was a breast cancer survivor, if a grandparent had diabetes?"
Whatever appeal Vance mightâve once had as a faux populist heâs seemingly abandoned in favor of a new identity thatâs a combination of Ayn Rand economist and Ralph Reed moral scold. Itâs a weird look politically.
Vance rehashes a lot of right-wing gibberish about âchoiceâ that didnât work when Republicans fought the ACAâs actual passage in 2010, and certainly doesnât work now that Americans have a very clear âbefore and afterâ picture. At a campaign event in North Carolina, Vance proposed segregating chronically ill patients in high-risk pools, which would result in astronomical premiums if they could even find coverage at all. This separate but unequal approach to health care is a proven failure, and Vance singlehandedly generated several negative articles on the issue that were far more damaging than Trumpâs âconcepts of a planâ gaffe.
âWell, I didn't discuss it with JDâ
Back when she on the Republican ticket in 2008, Sarah Palin was criticized for straying from the campaignâs message and publicly disagreeing with McCain. Republicans have similarly called out Vance for going ârogue,â which theyâve chalked up to the 40-year-old first-term senatorâs political inexperience.
As a Republican senator recently told Semafor, âItâs never good for the vice president to be in front of the president. Itâs just part of the learning experience.â
However, the healthcare debacle shows that Vance hasnât learned from his mistakes. After all, heâd previously gone ârogueâ on Meet the Press last month. Vance told Welker outright that Trump would veto a national abortion ban, contradicting Trumpâs deliberately vague efforts to take credit for Roe while maintaining distance from the draconian abortion bans individual states have passed as a result of its demise.
âIt's the vote of the people now,â Trump said at the debate. âIt's not tied up in the federal government. I did a great service in doing it.â
Whenever the debate moderators brought up abortion bans, Trump tossed a bouquet of words in Harrisâs direction, at one point even trying to change the topic to the Biden administrationâs efforts to forgive student loans. ABC Newsâs Linsey Davis used Vanceâs Meet the Press statement to try to pin him down on the issue, and Trump hurled Vance under the bus.
âWell, I didn't discuss it with JD in all fairness,â he said. âAnd I don't mind if he has a certain view but I think he was speaking for me but I really didn't.â (Watch below.)
Afterward Vance claimed, âIâve learned my lesson on speaking for the president before he and I have actually talked about an issue.â But he wasnât engaging in hypotheticals when he told Welker that Trump had âexplicitlyâ said heâd veto a national abortion ban. This was a lie, and trying to clean up his mistake just left him in a deeper hole.
Trump is purposefully vague about abortion bans for a reason. He needs anti-abortion extremists to turn out for him, which is why heâs done everything within his power to avoid explicitly taking a position on issues like Floridaâs abortion referendum. Vanceâs specific position risks alienating anti-abortion groups. It also puts the focus on Republican senators, who Democrats can now corner over whether theyâd actually support an abortion ban.
Thereâs little evidence Republican voters give a damn about coherent policy details. If they did, they might have chosen Nikki Haley or even Ron DeSantis during the GOP primary instead of an adjudicated rapist and raving kook. Trump couldâve also balanced the ticket with VP contenders Tim Scott or Marco Rubio, who are more cogent than Trump while nonetheless talking in circles on policy. But instead he went with Vance, who canât resist saying the quiet part loud.
When Vance discusses policy, he sounds like a smarmier Paul Ryan, which is the exact opposite message Trump wants to convey. In a recently unearthed Breitbart interview, Vance even suggested that people should willingly suffer economically just so they can stick it to the âwokeâ corporations.
âDo we want freedom?â he asked in a clip that the Harris campaign posted online. âDo we want an American way of life or do we want short-term satisfaction for every little thing? ⌠Weâre gonna have to choose between one or the other. We're gonna have to get a little uncomfortable. Weâre maybe gonna have to be willing to pay a little bit more for certain consumer goods.â (Watch below.)
This is why Vance is such an anchor on Trumpâs campaign. He might imagine that heâs the future of MAGA, but he fundamentally misunderstands Trumpism, which is about making other people suffer. Trump would never pitch misery to his supporters. His tariff policies are intended to penalize other nations or corporations who ship jobs overseas, but he never presents this as a sacrifice. He insists that his policies will only improve their way of life, and pivots to blaming out groups when they donât.
Trump both campaigns and governs like the slick Ricky Roma from âGlengarry Glen Ross.â He preys on weak people, appealing to their egos, and selling them something worthless. No matter how he hard he tries, though, Vance just canât close the deal.
Thatâs it for today
Weâll be back with more tomorrow. If you appreciate this post, please support Public Notice by signing up. Paid subscribers make PN possible.
Thanks for reading.
Concepts of a plan includes decimating the Department of Education and putting regular education under Department of Labor, and Special Education under Health and Human Services, which also won't exist anymore, since it will be the newly created Department of Life. It will be concerned with making sure that domestically and internationally we prevent abortions, keep track of them, and generally elevate an egg (but not a sperm) to status not given adult women. However, men won't get away Scott free. No, if they give birth to children out of wedlock, they are going to have to take some Christian Nationalist idea of parenting class, and have an app on their phones that automatically pays child support. May seem like a great idea, but I don't trust Project 2025 great ideas at all. Family is going to be defined as a man and a woman married together with children. The religion you have to have to get funding is Christian. They would like to do less for people, and have charity groups with strings attached do more. By strings I mean religious strings. Behave and believe our way or no way you get anything. Medicare and Medicaid will be privatized as far as I can see, and I consider any privatization a chance for Trump and his friends to grift. Will it be the Saudi Medicare plan, vs. the Turkish medicare plan, vs. the Kremlin's medicare plan, or Musk Medicare. I want none of what they are selling, concepts or not. There is a plan it is ugly and decimates the services from birth to death of every American who is not the truly wealthy.
One thing to point out about Vanceâs âyoung people shouldnât subsidize seniorâs health insurance costsâ
Many young people will want to have families. Pregnancy is a higher risk condition (& I think some insurers considered it a pre-existing condition), & that will be priced into insurance rates. So unless they have an incel-only category, I doubt the savings will be as much as Vance implies.