Trump’s Hillbilly VP

The attempted assassination of Donald Trump continues to dominate the news as the Republican National Convention is underway in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

In a highly charged moment last night, Trump appeared before the crowd with a bandage covering his ear, as Lee Greenwood sang “God Bless the U.S.A.” live.

Yesterday also marked another key development in the election season.

Trump nominated Ohio senator J.D. Vance as his vice president. Trump picked Vance over other leading contenders such as North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin as well as Sens. Marco Rubio (Florida) and Tim Scott (South Carolina).

Other names have been on the list from time to time but have been crossed off for various reasons. Kristi Noem was a contender, but she was eliminated when it was disclosed that she shot her puppy at point-blank range.

Ben Carson is well regarded but not the most dynamic campaigner. Tulsi Gabbard would have been a good fusion choice, but her views on abortion were probably too much for the Republican Party to support.

Trump Shuns the Establishment

Trump’s nomination of Vance is significant. It shows that he was committed to picking a vice president who’s fully on board with his MAGA agenda. This isn’t 2016 when Trump went with Mike Pence, the preferred candidate of the Republican establishment.

In 2016, Trump was willing to play by the “rules,” much like in 1980 when the Republican establishment pushed the moderate George Bush on the more conservative Ronald Reagan. Bush had previously condemned Reagan’s supply-side economic agenda, “voodoo economics.” So he wasn’t a natural Reaganite.

The consultant class, including Karl Rove and other Republican advisers, were highly critical of Trump’s decision to nominate Vance. They preferred a more centrist figure, hopefully from a swing state, who could appeal to suburban voters, or a female or minority candidate to attract those demographics.

But Trump ignored them and picked Vance.

Although he was originally a “never-Trumper” ahead of the 2016 election, Vance grew to become the most MAGA voice in the Senate when he was elected in 2022.

The question is will the Vance nomination hurt or help Trump’s chances in November?

What Vance Brings to the Table

Ohio is reliably Republican right now, and it isn’t considered a swing state in this election. And Vance won’t move the needle with suburban voters, women and minorities. That much is true. But at 39, he brings something to the ticket that’s been missing for a long time. That’s youth. He’s half Trump’s age.

Vance is also highly intelligent (a graduate of Yale Law School) with a wonkish understanding of policy. He’s almost nerdy in that sense, which complements Trump’s much less refined, swashbuckling style.

Democrats also can’t label Vance a white supremacist or racist, which they try to do with every Republican politician, because he’s married to an Indian woman. Incidentally, Vance knew Vivek Ramaswamy at Yale and named his second child after him.

But most important of all, J.D. Vance is almost the perfect embodiment of the MAGA movement, and closely identifies with Trump’s base.

MAGA Personified

Vance grew up in a Rust Belt town in rural Ohio, which was the victim of globalism. He was raised in a depressing environment of poverty, family dysfunction, violence and widespread drug and alcohol abuse. Deaths from drug overdoses outnumber deaths from natural causes in Vance’s hometown.

But he overcame his troubled youth. He joined the Marine Corps, went to college and later Yale Law School. He then became a venture capitalist and ultimately a United States senator. His is a true American, up-from-poverty success story.

In 2016 Vance wrote a bestselling memoir about his troubled childhood called Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.

It’s the people in places like this who most strongly support Donald Trump, which is ironic because Trump is a billionaire real estate tycoon from New York City who doesn’t exactly espouse rural values.

But they’ve been hollowed out by globalization and they enthusiastically support Trump’s MAGA agenda.

They feel completely abandoned by the Democratic Party, which has been taken over by coastal elites that prioritize mass immigration (which takes jobs and lowers wages of native-born Americans), sexual minorities and woke ideologies over their well-being.

Vance Rejects Globalism

Vance has serious issues with globalism. Here’s what he recently told The New York Times:

The main thrust of the postwar American order of globalization has involved relying more and more on cheaper labor. The trade issue and the immigration issue are two sides of the same coin: The trade issue is cheaper labor overseas; the immigration issue is cheaper labor at home, which applies upward pressure on a whole host of services, from hospital services to housing and so forth.

The populist vision, at least as it exists in my head, is an inversion of that: applying as much upward pressure on wages and as much downward pressure on the services that the people use as possible…

This is why I think the economics profession is fundamentally wrong about both immigration and about tariffs. Yes, tariffs can apply upward pricing pressure on various things — though I think it’s massively overstated — but when you are forced to do more with your domestic labor force, you have all of these positive dynamic effects…

What is not good is you replace the McDonald’s worker from Middletown, Ohio, who makes $17 an hour with an immigrant who makes $15 an hour. And that is, I think, the main thrust of elite liberalism, whether people acknowledge it or not.

Or the hotels example. If you cannot hire illegal migrants to staff your hotels, then you have to go to one of the 7 million prime-age American men who are out of the labor force and find some way to re-engage them.

It’s amazing: [Business owners say,] “But we can’t run our business unless we have some of these immigrants coming over, because we can’t find people who are going to do the job.”

My response is that there are people who would do those jobs if the incentives were there.

Vance’s comments speak to the core concerns of Trump’s base.

By picking Vance, Trump is going all in on MAGA. And as of today, it looks like they’re going to win.

Do you like or dislike Trump’s VP pick? Let us know: feedback@dailyreckoning.com