Panicking J.D. Vance Rushes to Dismiss Trump’s Awful Poll Results

“Average Joe” J.D. Vance has “no doubt” that he and Donald Trump are going to be elected in November—even as polls show that Vice President Kamala Harris’s “politics of joy” are overtaking them on the national stage.

Speaking with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham on Tuesday, the Republican vice presidential pick—who might be best known for his uncanny ability to turn scripted, funny bits into uncomfortable moments that sit and stay with people—brushed off his dismal favorability ratings.

“How do you go to the undecideds at this point, this shrinking pool of people, and convince them that not only are you serious—and you’re seriously smart, but you’re a regular person, I’ve known you for a long time—you’re really fun, you’re really funny, versus the giggle and vibe show that seems to work for a lot of women voters out there?” prompted Ingraham, comparing the Trump-Vance strategy to the Harris-Walz ticket.

“You know, Laura, my approach to this is just to get out there and meet as many people as possible, and I know this is Donald Trump’s approach too,” Vance said. “That’s what I’m going to keep on doing, Laura. I don’t put much stock in the polls, even the polls that show us ahead, and there are a lot of those these days.”

Except, polls seem to consistently show that Harris has either pulled even with Trump or edged ahead.

And actually going out and meeting the American people hasn’t gone so well for Vance. Last week, the Ohio senator had a disastrous P.R. stunt at a donut shop in Valdosta, Georgia, where he couldn’t accomplish one normal human interaction with any of the bakery’s employees. On Thursday, Vance was intermittently booed by a large crowd at the International Association of Fire Fighters conference.

“What I put stock in is the wisdom of the American people, and the fact that if we go out there, make our case, don’t hide behind a teleprompter but get out there and meet people, the American people are going to elect me and Donald Trump,” Vance continued. “I have no doubt about that.”

The son of the late Republican Senator John McCain has criticized Donald Trump for his campaign event at Arlington National Cemetery, and announced he plans to vote for Kamala Harris in November.

1st Lt. Jimmy McCain, a 17-year military veteran, told CNN that he changed his voter registration weeks ago from independent to Democrat, and called Trump’s cemetery visit a “violation.”

“It just blows me away,” McCain said. “These men and women that are laying in the ground there have no choice” whether they wanted to be in Trump’s campaign video or photographs.

“I just think that for anyone who’s done a lot of time in their uniform, they just understand that inherently—that it’s not about you there. It’s about these people who gave the ultimate sacrifice in the name of their country,” McCain added.

McCain also told CNN that he “would get involved in any way I could” to help Harris’s campaign, making him the first McCain family member to leave the Republican Party, even as his mother, Cindy, and sister Meghan have criticized Trump. (In response to her brother’s interview, Meghan McCain said she isn’t voting for Harris or Trump.)

The Republican presidential nominee and convicted felon infamously said that John McCain was “not a war hero” because he was captured during the Vietnam War, and he remained at odds with the Arizona senator until McCain’s death in 2018.

The younger McCain told CNN that Trump’s seeming disrespect for veterans stems from the former president’s lack of military service.

“Many of these men and women, who served their country, chose to do something greater than themselves. They woke up one morning, they signed on the dotted line, they put their right hand up, and they chose to serve their country,” McCain said. “And that’s an experience that Donald Trump has not had. And I think that might be something that he thinks about a lot.”

Harris has secured endorsements from several Republicans opposed to Trump, including elected officials in Arizona, as well as 200 former staffers who worked for President George W. Bush, the late Senator McCain, and Utah Senator Mitt Romney. Meanwhile, Trump’s high-profile endorsements from outside of his party seem limited to people like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and former Representative Tulsi Gabbard.

Last month’s tiff between Donald Trump and Joe Rogan over the podcaster’s mock endorsement of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was, apparently, no biggie.

In an interview with Lex Fridman released Tuesday, Trump attempted to brush off the “bit of tension.”

“I don’t think there was any tension,” Trump said. “I’ve always liked him, but I don’t know him. I only see him when I walk into the arena with Dana and I shake his hand. I see him there and I think he’s good at what he does, but I don’t know about doing his podcast. I guess I’d do it but I haven’t been asked and I’m not asking them. I’m not asking anybody.”

Still, Trump insisted that he “likes” Rogan, even if he’s “sort of liberal.” His endorsement of Kennedy—whom Trump described as a “different kind of guy”—supposedly didn’t bother him.

That’s a starkly different tone from the one the Republican presidential nominee took in the immediate aftermath of Rogan’s Uno-reverse endorsement of Kennedy, in which he posted to Truth Social that he was looking forward to Rogan getting “booed” at a UFC tournament.

Attacking Rogan, one of the most popular podcasters in the country with independents and people on the right, was an eyebrow-raising decision for the waning candidate. Trump has rushed to pander to younger audiences in recent weeks in an effort to recoup the younger vote, hitting a youth podcast circuit that included speaking with comedian Theo Von and livestreamer Adin Ross.

Donald Trump just couldn’t back up his outlandish claims about voter fraud during an interview with podcaster Lex Fridman that aired Tuesday. 

During the 45-minute interview, Fridman asked Trump directly if he felt that Kamala Harris should be challenged more by the press. In response, the Republican nominee started rattling off false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. 

“I don’t know. I can’t believe the whole thing is happening. We had a man in there that should’ve never been in there. They kept him in a basement, they used Covid, they cheated, but they used Covid to cheat. They cheated without Covid, too,” Trump said. Moments later, the former president claimed he had “lost by a whisker” in 2020. 

Later, Fridman tried to delicately ask Trump about what he would say to convince independent voters who were “troubled by what happened in the 2020 election” to vote for him. Fridman specifically referred to Trump’s unsupported claims about widespread voter fraud, and his administration’s alleged fake electors scheme. Despite Fridman’s softball approach, Trump doubled down on his disturbing rhetoric, before quickly swerving off topic.

“I think the fraud was on the other side. I think the election was a fraud, and many people felt it was that. And they wanted answers. And when you can’t challenge an election—you have to be able to challenge it, otherwise it’s gonna get worse, not better,” Trump said. He explained that there were lots of ways to “solve this problem” to prevent noncitizens from voting, including paper ballots, same-day voting, and stricter voter identification.

In reality, there is very little evidence to suggest that noncitizen voting is a major problem in the U.S.  In 2016, noncitizen votes accounted for just 0.0001 percent of the votes cast, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. As it happens, the only people concocting a scheme to fake votes in the last election were in Trump’s camp.

“So, uhhhh look, we have the worst border in the history of the world. We have, coming into our country right now, millions and millions of people, at levels that nobody’s ever seen. I don’t believe any country has ever seen it. We have, coming into our country right now, millions of people. And they would use sticks and stones not to make it happen, not to let it happen,” Trump said, seeming increasingly confused as he descended into one of his typical anti-immigrant stump speeches. 

Trump went on to complain about Harris as the “border czar,” which was never her official position, and continued to tout baseless claims that countries from around the world were offloading their people from prisons, mental institutions, and insane asylums to the U.S. After about three minutes of Trump’s blatant fearmongering, Fridman tried to ask his original question a different way, so that it might actually elicit a real answer.

“So, a lot of people believe that there was some shady stuff that went on with the election. Whether it’s media bias or big tech. Still, the claim of widespread fraud was the thing that bothers people,” Fridman said, but Trump easily bypassed his gentle phrasing.

“Well, I don’t focus on the past, I focus on the future,” Trump said, before diving into a lengthy rehashing of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, which was, of course, also the past.

Fridman tried one last time to get an actual response from Trump. “Let me just linger on the election a little—a little bit more. For this election, it might be a close one. What can we do to avoid the insanity and division of the previous election? Whether you win or lose,” Fridman asked. 

“Well I hope it’s not a close one. I don’t know how people can vote for someone who destroyed our country,” Trump said, before turning back to immigration. 

The former president’s softball interview with Fridman was littered with several particularly off moments for a low-energy Trump. 

“I get very big audiences, and you know, for many people it’s virtually impossible to get up and speak for an hour and half and have nobody leave,” Trump bragged at one point. “You know, it’s not an easy thing to do, and it’s an ability.”

Of course, there is some well-documented evidence that plenty of onlookers choose to cut out on Trump’s incoherent speeches early—and even Fox News doesn’t play them all the way through anymore. 

In a softball interview, Donald Trump still couldn’t answer correctly when asked about sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

In a wide-ranging interview with podcaster Lex Fridman released on Tuesday, Trump managed to praise Jeffrey Epstein while also claiming he “never went to his island.”

“He was a good salesman; he was, you know, a hailing, hearty type of guy,” Trump said when asked why he believes so many powerful people were close to Epstein. “He had some nice assets that he’d throw around, like islands.”

When asked about his “hesitation” on releasing documents related to Epstein, including a his client list, the former president refused to commit but said he’d “take a look at it.”

Trump then immediately began trying to excuse Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for his relationship with Epstein.

“Kennedy is interesting because it was so many years ago,” Trump  said, referring to the man who admitted he flew onEpstein’s private plane twice. Trump seemed to justify the list of powerful men being kept secret all this time, adding that releasing the list “endangers certain people.”

Trump has previously waffled on declassifying the Epstein files. In June, he told Fox & Friends Weekend that he would, but he also had hesitations. “I guess I would. I think that less so because you don’t want to affect people’s lives if it’s phony stuff in there, because it’s a lot of phony stuff with that whole world. But I think I would.”

At the end of the Fridman interview, Trump finished on a similar note, eventually saying he’d “be inclined” to release the files. Of course, right-wing media and influencers are already trying to claim the interview is a win. “Trump says he will release the Epstein client list if elected. The Democrat elites are shaking rn,” said Libs of TikTok, ignoring the rest of his words.