Donald Trump may be regretting his choice of running-mate and wondering “Why did I pick this guy?” according to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. Over the past few weeks since Trump announced his decision, the narrative that Sen. J.D. Vance is “weird” has gained traction, and Schumer speculated that may have the former president considering replacing him.
“Every day, it comes out Vance has done something more extreme, more weird, more erratic,” Schumer said. “Vance seems to be more weird and erratic than President Trump, and I’ll bet President Trump is sitting there, scratching his head, and wondering, ‘Why did I pick this guy?’”
The Democratic senator added, “The choice may be one of the best things [Trump] ever did for Democrats.”
It’s true that the news cycle around Vance has been, well, weird, and Democrats as well as celebrities opposed to Trump have pounced on that messaging.
Take, for example, a 2021 Tucker Carlson interview where Vance said that America was being influenced “by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they wanna make the rest of the country miserable, too.” He added, “You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC, the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children.”
Harris has step-children with her husband, Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff. Later in 2021, Buttigieg and his husband Chasen welcomed twins, a daughter and son.
Jennifer Aniston clapped back at Vance, writing on Instagram, “I truly can’t believe this is coming from a potential VP of The United States. All I can say is… Mr. Vance, I pray that your daughter is fortunate enough to bear children of her own one day.”
“To put it in women-hating words you’d understand,” comedian Chelsea Handler quipped, “You’re being hysterical.”
In another strange move, Vance previously proposed the bizarre idea of giving all children a vote in America and handing “control over those votes to the parents of those children.” He has also floated the idea of a “federal response” to prohibit women living in red states like his home state of Ohio from traveling to obtain an abortion post-Roe. “I’m pretty sympathetic to that [idea],” he said. In 2022, Vance said he “would like abortion to be illegal nationally.”
Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign has played into the Vance is weird narrative by calling him a “creep” in a statement Friday with the headline: “J.D. Vance is a Creep (Who Wants to Ban Abortion Nationwide).” In an email sent Friday, the Harris campaign wrote, “J.D. Vance is weird. Voters know it — Vance is the most unpopular VP pick in decades.” Also on Friday, per Politico, Harris campaign spokesperson Serafina Chitika stated that Vance “spent all week making headlines for his out-of-touch, weird ideas.”
It’s also odd how Vance, once a self-described “never Trumper,” has pivoted to becoming one of his most fervent supporters. While in public, Vance used to call Trump an “idiot” and “reprehensible.” In private, he reportedly likened him to Adolf Hitler. But Vance sought and secured Trump’s endorsement during his 2022 Senate race.
And then there’s the couch rumor. A viral tweet falsely claimed that Vance wrote in his book, Hillbilly Eligy, about masturbating using a latex glove between two sofa cushions. Although that allegation has been disproven (Vance never wrote anything like that in the book) the damage was already done in the form of memes and jokes that continue to propagate across the internet.
Will all of this lead Trump to dump his vice presidential nominee ahead of Ohio’s Aug. 7 ballot deadline? Schumer thinks it’s possible, although it’s worth pointing out that doing so would likely require Trump to at least tacitly admit he was wrong — something he rarely does.
“Now [Trump] has 10 days before the Ohio ballot is locked in,” Schumer said. “He has a choice: Does he keep Vance on the ticket, where he already has a whole lot of baggage — he’s probably going to be more baggage over the weeks because we’ll hear more things about him — or does he pick someone new? What’s his choice?”
President Donald Trump discussing Venezuela at a press conference at Mar-a-Lago.
Why Venezuela Could Be a Turning Point in Gen Z’s Support for Trump
When Donald Trump called himself “the peace president” during his 2024 campaign, it was not just a slogan that my fellow Gen Z men and I took seriously, but also a promise we took personally. For a generation raised in the shadow of endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it felt reassuring. It told us there was a new Republican Party that had learned from its failures and wouldn’t ask our generation to fight another war for regime change. That belief stood strong until the U.S. overthrew Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Growing up in the long wake of the wars in Iraq in Afghanistan shaped how my generation learned to see Republicans. For us, “traditional” Republican foreign policy became synonymous with unnecessary conflicts that caused young people to bear the consequences. We heard how Iraq was sold to the public as a necessary war to destroy weapons of mass destruction, only to become a long conflict that defined the early adulthood of many millennials. Many of us grew up watching older siblings come home from deployments changed, and hearing teachers and coaches talk about friends who never fully came back. By the time we were old enough to pay attention, distrust of Bush-era Republicans wasn’t ideological, it was inherited from what we had heard.
As the 2024 election was rolling around, that dynamic had flipped. After watching wars in Ukraine and Gaza dominate headlines while Joe Biden was president, the Democrats were now the warmongers. My friends constantly told me how a vote for Kamala Harris was a vote to go to war. On the other hand, Donald Trump and the Republicans were the ones my friends thought could keep us safe. “I’m not voting for Trump because I love him,” one friend told me. “I’m voting for him because he cares about us and I don’t want to go fight in a stupid war.” For many of my friends, much of their vote came down to one question: Who was less likely to send us to fight? The answer to them was pretty clear.
Fast forward to now, and Venezuela has begun to complicate that belief. Even without talk of a draft or a formal declaration of war, the renewed focus on U.S. involvement and troops on the ground has brought back the same language of escalation my generation was taught to distrust. Young men online have been voicing the same worries, concerned that the ousting of Maduro mirrors the early stages of wars they were raised to fear. When I asked a friend what he thought about Venezuela, he shared that same sentiment. “This is how all these wars always start,” he told me. “They might try to make it sound like it’s not actually a war, but people our age always end up being the ones that pay the price for it.” For young men who supported Trump because they believed he represented a break from interventionist politics, Venezuela blurs the line between the “new” Republican Party they thought they were backing and the old one they were raised to reject.
For many young men, Venezuela has become a major part of a broader shift of how they view Trump. A recent poll from Speaking with American Men (SAM) found that Trump’s approval rating has fallen 10 percent among young men, with only 27 percent agreeing with the statement that Trump is “delivering for you”.
Gen Z men’s support of Trump was never about ideology or party loyalty, it was about the idea that he had their back and would fight for them. But that’s no longer the case. Recently, Trump proposed adding $500 billion to the military budget. Ideas like that will only hurt the president with young men. My friends don’t want more military spending that could get us entangled in foreign wars; they want a president who keeps them home and fights for their economic and social needs. As Trump pushes for a bigger military and more intervention abroad, the promise that once made him feel like a protector of young men now feels out of reach.
For my generation, Venezuela isn’t just another foreign policy dispute, it’s a conflict many young men worry they could be the ones sent to fight. Gen Z men didn’t support Trump because he was a Republican, but because they believed he was different from the old Republicans. He would be a president who would have their back, fight for their interests and keep them from fighting unnecessary wars. Now, that promise feels fragile, and the fear of being the ones asked to face the consequences has returned. For a generation raised on the effects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the idea of another war isn’t abstract, it’s personal.