It’s a wonder Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance’s pants didn’t spontaneously combust during his speech accepting the vice-presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention.
His remarks were more proof that he’s Donald Trump’s equal as a fraudster and a flimflammer, especially when it comes to working Americans.
“We need a leader who is not in the pocket of big business but answers to the working man, union and nonunion alike, a leader who won’t sell out to multinational corporations but will stand up for American companies and American industry,” Vance claimed of Trump.
As we say in western Kentucky – “Do what?”
“As former President Donald Trump seeks a second term in the White House, he’s increasingly turning to billionaires to power his campaign,” wrote Business Insider’s Bryan Metzger and Madeline Berg.
“Several prominent billionaires — including the richest man on Earth — took to social media over the weekend to endorse presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump shortly after a 20-year-old gunman attempted to assassinate the former president at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday,” wrote Jake Johnson in Common Dreams. Figuratively, the fattest of those fat cats is Elon Musk, the democracy-despising Tesla guy, whose net worth is reportedly close to $270 billion.
Added Johnson: “Hours after Musk’s endorsement post went live, billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman announced his decision to formally back Trump’s bid for a second term in the White House, four years after the former president attempted to overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory and sparked a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol.
“Another billionaire, venture capitalist David Sacks, reiterated his support for Trump over the weekend after formally endorsing the former president last month and hosting a $300,000-per-person fundraiser for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. The trio joins at least a dozen other billionaires backing Trump, who postures as a populist ally of the working class while supporting policies that overwhelmingly benefit the ultra-rich.
“Billionaires got $1 trillion richer during Trump’s first term and have seen their wealth soar by $2.2 trillion since the passage of the Trump-GOP tax cuts in 2017.”
Anyway, going on two years ago, when Vance’s Trump-blessed Senate campaign was turning toward the home stretch and the Republicans — and multiple pollsters and pundits — were predicting a Trump-triggered Red Tsunami in Senate and House elections, I wrote on the Kentucky State AFL-CIO’s webpage: “Myths abound, from Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster to Unicorns and the Easter Bunny. But there’s one myth that’s in a class all by itself: the whopper that Donald Trump is pro-union.”
Today, I’m expanding that special class to include Vance and Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley. Of late, much of the media has been abuzz about the two Millennials supposedly representing a new breed of “populist pro-worker” Republican. It’s a variant of the same bogus narrative about Trump many in the Fourth Estate parroted when he ran the first time.
“Sen. J.D. Vance likes to play union supporter on the picket line, but his record proves that to be a sham,” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said in a statement. “A Trump–Vance White House is a corporate CEO’s dream and a worker’s nightmare.” (The AFL-CIO endorsed the Biden-Harris ticket a year ago last month, the earliest endorsement the federation has ever made in a presidential race.)
Hawley, who’s running for reelection, dropped by a picket line, too. But the Show-Me-State AFL-CIO saw through his pathetic pretense and endorsed his pro-union Democratic opponent, Lucas Kunce. (The Ohio State AFL-CIO backed Democratic Congressman Tim Ryan against Vance two years ago.)
Said a Missouri AFL-CIO statement: “Lucas is the candidate who is ready to lead a statewide movement that will help elect pro-worker candidates up and down the ballot. Kunce has proven that he has been able to gain support from our members throughout the state of Missouri.
“We have one shot to take this Senate seat back for working families. Josh Hawley has proven to side with greedy CEOs and the corporate establishment over working people. We, the working people of Missouri, are ready to take back our U.S. Senate seat and elect Lucas Kunce in 2024.”
Terri Gerstein, director of New York University’s Wagner Labor Initiative, yanked back the curtain on the Vance-Hawley con job in an interview with CNN: “Pro-worker is raising the minimum wage, ensuring people get overtime, supporting paid sick and family leave. Play-acting as working class by dressing up in jeans and acting aggrieved doesn’t do anything for real working people who are struggling.”
In his speech, Vance tried to burnish his phony image as a blue collar champion by praising industrial workers who typically belong to unions. He could have backed up his purportedly pro-worker words with pro-worker deeds on the Senate floor. Of course he didn’t.
In 2023, his first full year in the Senate, the AFL-CIO rated Vance a zero on a 0 to 100 percent scale based on how often a member of Congress supports legislation “important to working families, including strengthening Social Security and Medicare, freedom to join a union, improving workplace safety, and more.”
Hawley, who is seeking a second term, also rated a 0 for 2023 and 11 percent for all the time he’s been in the Senate.
Here’s Shuler’s full statement on Trump and his VP pick:
“Donald Trump has a miserable record of breaking every promise he’s made to working people – from failing to pay his workers and crossing a picket line to his disastrous four years in the White House. That betrayal would continue if he is re-elected – so it’s no surprise Trump chose a vice president who will be nothing more than a rubber stamp for that anti-worker vision.
“Sen. JD Vance likes to play union supporter on the picket line, but his record proves that to be a sham. He has introduced legislation to allow bosses to bypass their workers’ unions with phony corporate-run unions, disparaged striking UAW members while collecting hefty donations from one of the major auto companies, and opposed the landmark Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which would end union-busting ‘right to work’ laws and make it easier for workers to form unions and win strong contracts.
“If Trump wins, he would once again stack the federal agencies that exist to protect workers with union-busting corporate executives and anti-union extremists, strip funding for workplace health and safety, and do everything in his power to take away workers’ voice on the job – just like he did in his first term. That would mean weaker union contracts, lower pay, and fewer benefits, so greedy bosses and his corporate donors could get richer. We can expect that a Vice President Vance would be fully engaged in helping Trump roll back decades of worker gains.
“A Trump-Vance White House is a corporate CEO’s dream and a worker’s nightmare. Look no further than the devastating Project 2025 plan that would eviscerate unions and empty workers’ pockets just to boost the profits of their corporate friends and donors. That’s the Trump-Vance agenda. The AFL-CIO will continue educating union voters every single day to ensure the labor movement and working people stop the harmful agenda of these anti-worker politicians from becoming a reality.”
The AFL-CIO-allied Alliance for Retired Americans pledged to likewise educate voters.
“Donald Trump’s choice of Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate locks in place a ticket that endangers the things that retirees care about the most: the protection and expansion of their earned Social Security and Medicare benefits,” ARA President Richard Fiesta said in a statement.
“As a member of the U.S. Senate in 2023 and 2024, Sen. Vance earned just a 13% lifetime Pro-Retiree Score in the Alliance for Retired Americans Congressional Voting Record for his votes on important senior issues.
“Donald Trump has long acknowledged he would be open to slashing Medicare and Social Security spending in a second term as President, and Sen. Vance also supports cutting those benefits. The selection of Sen. Vance as his running mate is another major step in that direction.
“Sen. Vance has even supported ending Medicare’s guaranteed benefits.
“In addition, J.D. Vance is not in favor of President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act that requires Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices, caps insulin prices at $35 per month for Medicare beneficiaries and makes vaccines free for all Medicare beneficiaries.
“And when it comes to voting rights, Sen. Vance does not support either expanding vote by mail or protecting voting rights.
“The 4.4 million members of the Alliance for Retired Americans will do all it can before Election Day to educate seniors on the Trump-Vance plans for seniors. Choosing Senator Vance has made our job a lot easier.”
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