Schumer calls on Trump to pick new running mate, claims Vance is 'best thing he's ever done for Democrats'

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on Sunday said former President Trump should swap out his “incredibly bad choice” of Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, as his running mate.

During an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Schumer was discussing the upcoming presidential election when he decided to address “the addition of JD Vance” to the GOP ticket.

 “It’s an incredibly bad choice,” Schumer said. “I think Donald Trump, I know him, and he’s probably sitting and watching the TV, and every day, Vance, it comes out Vance has done something more extreme, more weird, more erratic. Vance seems to be more erratic and more extreme than President Trump.” 

“And I’ll bet President Trump is sitting there scratching his head and wondering, ‘Why did I pick this guy?’ The choice may be one of the best things he ever did for Democrats,” Schumer said. 

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Referring to Trump, the former president and 2024 Republican presidential nominee, Schumer said “the president has about 10 days – 10 days before the Ohio ballot is locked in.” 

“And he has a choice: does he keep Vance on the ticket?” Schumer said. “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?” 

The left has gone after Vance in recent days over a 2021 interview in which the Ohio senator appeared to disparage “childless cat ladies” in the Democratic Party.

“We are effectively run in this country, via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, 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,” Vance said three years ago, specifically calling out Vice President Harris and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., as being part of that group. 

On an episode of Fox News’ “The Brian Kilmeade Show,” Trump 2024 senior campaign adviser Chris LaCivita said Vance’s interview is being “blatantly taken out of context,” adding that the Trump-Vance campaign is not against “childless women” as the liberal media is saying.

Vance, the author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” a memoir adapted into a Netflix film about his time as a Yale Law School student reflecting on growing up in Appalachia, was propelled into national headlines when Trump announced him as vice presidential running mate at the start of the Republican National Convention. 

Sen. JD Vance introduces former President Trump during a rally at Herb Brooks National Hockey Center on July 27, 2024, in St. Cloud, Minnesota. (Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

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Republicans have billed Vance, whose mother is 10 years sober, as speaking to forgotten working class Americans. 

But the Harris campaign has attempted to counter that messaging. 

In a video shared weeks ago, Harris claimed Vance would be “loyal only to Trump, not to our country” and a “rubber stamp for [Trump’s] extreme agenda.”

But Vance, a Marine veteran who served in Iraq, shot back during a campaign rally with Trump in Minnesota Saturday. 

Vice presidential candidate JD Vance speaks during a campaign rally in St. Cloud, Minnesota, on July 27, 2024. (Alex Wroblewski/AFP via Getty Images)

“Now, I saw the other day Kamala Harris questioned my loyalty to this country. That’s the word she used, loyalty. And it’s an interesting word. Semper Fi, because there is no greater sign of disloyalty to this country than what Kamala Harris has done at our southern border,” Vance said. “And I’d like to ask the vice president, what has she done to question my loyalty to this country?”

“I served in the United States Marine Corps. I went to Iraq for this country. I built a business for this country. And my running mate took a bullet for this country. So my question to Kamala Harris is, what the hell have you done to question our loyalty to the United States of America?” Vance added. “And the answer, my friends, is nothing.” 

Asked about how Harris should handle Republican criticism of her immigration policy, Schumer told CBS host Robert Costa that Democrats in Congress and the Biden-Harris administration “put together the toughest border policy that would have stopped the flow from the border that we’ve seen in a very long time.” 

He said the plan was initially supported by Republicans but claimed Trump wants chaos at the border so he can run on it during the election.

“We’re happy to bring that up. And case after case, when we bring that up, the voters side with us, not with their policies. We were willing to fix the border. Trump and his Republican minions said, ‘Don’t fix it, we want chaos for political purposes.’ Who do you think’s going to win the argument?” Schumer said. 

Fox News’ Garbriel Hays contributed to this report.