Devastating New Poll Is Worst News Yet for J.D. Vance and Trump

Vice presidential picks don’t normally take center stage during an election year. Unfortunately for Donald Trump, that’s not the case with J.D. Vance.

Democratic attacks on Vance are actually sticking, making the Ohio senator an increasingly unpopular candidate. A pair of polls conducted weeks apart by centrist Democratic pollster Blueprint indicate that Vance’s favorability has fallen from -7 to -11, Semafor reported Monday, with a significant number of voters viewing the vice presidential pick exactly as Democrats describe him: “conservative,” “anti-woman,” and “weird.”

“It’s not just the favorables; it’s what people think of it. It’s how he’s been introduced to the country,” Evan Roth Smith, lead pollster for Blueprint, told Semafor. “Everything has gone exactly as bad as Democrats had hoped and Republicans have feared and everyone suspects.”

Vance, who famously authored the New York Times–bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy, has seen a significant decrease of positive labels by voters since he was announced to the Republican ticket. Descriptive options such as “young,” “smart,” and “businessman” have all gone down among survey participants, according to Semafor.

Most participants were aware of Vance’s strange and off-putting remarks, including an instance in which Vance claimed that childless adults should not hold positions of power as they don’t have a “direct stake” in the future of the country, deriding Democratic Party leaders as “childless cat ladies.” Approximately 50 percent of respondents said they were aware of Vance’s comments, while 55 percent said they were bothered by it.

Potential voters were also disturbed by a 2021 interview in which Vance defended a Texas abortion law’s lack of exceptions for instances of rape and incest by claiming that the resulting pregnancies were simply “inconvenient.” Roughly 62 percent of survey participants said they were “bothered” by that description, while 50 percent noted that it “bothers me a lot.”

Trump has attempted to brush off the issue by arguing that, historically, a presidential nominee’s pick for number two has “virtually no impact” on the outcome of the race. But Vance may prove to be the exception, argues The New Republic’s Alex Shephard:

As the race tightens—and Harris is leading in several polls—it’s becoming clear that Donald Trump has slowed down considerably over the last four years. He is very old. He struggles to hold his thoughts together, even by his own standards. And he has considerably less energy than he did even a few years ago. He can’t campaign vigorously. Which means he will have to rely on his running mate—whom everyone seems to hate.

J.D. Vance evidently did some cross-dressing back in law school.

On Sunday, a photo of the Ohio senator and Republican vice presidential nominee allegedly wearing a blonde wig and dressed as a woman was posted on X.

It didn’t take long before the picture was trending with the hashtag #SofaLoren, a play on words referring to the false rumor that Vance performed a sexual act with a couch. When The Daily Beast reached out to Vance to see if the photo was real, the campaign did not deny its authenticity and also refused to comment further.

The source of the photo is from one of Vance’s classmates at Yale Law School, Travis Whitfield, who said the picture was taken by a different classmate in 2012, when they were all students. Whitfield sent the photo to podcast host Matt Bernstein, who then uploaded it to X.

“It’s from a group chat of Vance’s fellow classmates and is from a friend of a friend,” Whitfield said to The Daily Beast. “I believe it was grabbed from Facebook and was taken at a Halloween party.”

Whitfield posted on X about where the photo came from, offering proof in the form of the photo’s presence on his phone. Whitfield doesn’t appear to be a Vance supporter, saying in a different post that “from all the sources I’ve heard, JD was actually a good guy in law school. Not sure what happened after though…”

While a funny photo of a politician in a Halloween costume from college normally wouldn’t be a big deal, Vance has a history of attacks on the LGBTQ+ community, using the “groomer” slur against critics of “Don’t Say Gay” legislation. He introduced the “Protect Children’s Innocence Act” in the Senate, which promotes misinformation about transgender health care. Vance also stated that he would vote against codifying same-sex marriage and has promoted so-called “parents’ rights” talking points.

Just on Sunday, he falsely claimed that his Democratic counterpart, Tim Walz, promotes taking children away from parents who don’t consent to gender-affirming care. The fact that neither he nor the campaign has denied the truth of this photo is telling. In any case, expect this photo to make the late-night TV circuit, or at least persist on social media along with his fictional couch tryst.

Donald Trump just lost the ability to use yet another song from a musician who wants nothing to do with his divisive, hateful rallies.

The family of Isaac Hayes announced a sprawling lawsuit on Sunday, slamming the Republican presidential nominee for 134 counts of copyright infringement related to repeatedly using Hayes’s song “Hold On I’m Coming” at numerous campaign rallies between 2022 and 2024.

“We demand the cessation of use, removal of all related videos, a public disclaimer, and payment of $3 million in licensing fees by August 16, 2024,” announced Hayes’s son, Isaac Hayes III, on social media. “Failure to comply will result in further legal action.”

Isaac Hayes III explained Saturday on social media that his family had repeatedly asked Trump, his team, and the RNC not to use the song, but their requests went unheeded.

“Donald Trump represents the worst in integrity and class with his disrespect and sexual abuse of Women and racist rhetoric,” Hayes wrote on X.

The family has issued a cease and desist against further use of the song and has demanded that Trump, his campaign, and the RNC “remove all videos featuring the song and” issue a statement affirming that they never received authorization to play the song. The suit also demands that Trump issue a check for $3 million in licensing fees, according to legal documents shared by the estate.

“The normal fee for these infringements will be 10 times as much if we litigate, starting at $150,000 per use,” the documents read, describing the $3 million price tag as “very discounted.”

Trump has until Friday to respond to the notice before the family says it will “proceed with litigation.”

But that wasn’t the only musical loss for the Trump campaign over the weekend. On Sunday, Celine Dion’s team clarified on Instagram that it did not approve of or endorse Trump’s use of Dion’s song “My Heart Will Go On” at a rally in Montana.

“… And really, THAT song?” they added.

Hayes and Dion join a long list of artists who have yanked their rights away from Trump, including Sinéad O’Connor, The Beatles, Adele, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, Guns N’ Roses, Leonard Cohen, Queen, Prince, Pharrell, the Rolling Stones, The Smiths’ Johnny Marr, Rihanna, Neil Young, Linkin Park, the late Tom Petty, the Village People, and Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler.

Donald Trump has taken his size insecurity to the next level, falsely accusing Vice President Kamala Harris of using artificial intelligence to make a crowd appear bigger in photos and videos.

Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, arrived at Detroit Metropolitan Airport in Michigan on Wednesday, where they were reportedly greeted by a crowd of 15,000 people. Only, Trump and his cronies are pushing the conspiracy theory that it never even happened.

“Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport? There was nobody at the plane, and she ‘A.I.’d’ it, and showed a massive ‘crowd’ of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Sunday night.

Trump wrote his thoughts above a screenshotted post from conservative commentator Chuck Callesto, a font of misinformation whose faux–breaking news posts are regularly seen by hundreds of thousands of people.

Trump claimed that Harris had been outed by an airport maintenance worker and that the rumor had been “confirmed by the reflection” in the finish of the plane, which did not appear to show the crowd.

“She’s a CHEATER. She had NOBODY waiting, and the ‘crowd’ looked like 10,000 people! Same thing is happening with her fake ‘crowds’ at her speeches. This is the way the Democrats win Elections, by CHEATING—And they’re even worse at the Ballot Box,” Trump wrote.

Trump argued that Harris should be “disqualified” for election interference, over the use of the image. “Anyone who does that will cheat at ANYTHING,” Trump wrote.

Like many of Trump’s accusations, this conspiracy theory is actually an admission.

Ever since he lied about the crowd size at his inauguration, Trump has continued to establish himself as an unreliable source for numbers of any kind. In May, his campaign pushed the false claim that his rally in the Bronx had attracted a crowd of 25,000 people, while in reality it was more like 1,000.

One thing is for certain: Trump cares a lot about appearances. Apparently, he even has a weird habit of waving at no one as he boards his plane.

The Republican presidential nominee’s sensitivity to Harris’s groundswell of popularity comes just as his running mate, J.D. Vance, trailed Harris and Walz across the country, attracting meager crowds just miles away from Harris’s massive gatherings.

Trump’s ravings were easily answered by actual journalists and photographers who had covered the event, whose reporting revealed a sizable crowd inside a packed airplane hangar, with many rallygoers spilling out onto the tarmac.

Hany Farid, a professor at UC Berkeley specializing in digital forensics, said he analyzed the image for evidence of A.I. generation. “While the lack of evidence of manipulation is not evidence the image is real. We find no evidence that this image is AI-generated or digitally altered,” he wrote in a post on LinkedIn.

Harris’s campaign hit back at Trump on Sunday night, claiming that the image was genuine. “1) This is an actual photo of a 15,000-person crowd for Harris-Walz in Michigan,” the Harris campaign wrote in a post on X. “2) Trump has still not campaigned in a swing state in over a week.… Low energy?”

Renowned white supremacist and Charlottesville protester Nick Fuentes personally attacked J.D. Vance and his wife, Usha, last month for her Indian heritage, claiming that the Republican vice presidential pick “clearly doesn’t value his racial identity” and is unlikely to be a “defender of white identity” due to his wife’s ethnicity.

But even that isn’t enough for Vance to take a stand against the racist rhetoric.

In a sitdown interview with ABC News’s This Week on Sunday, Vance continued to defend a dinner between Donald Trump, Fuentes, and Kanye West at Mar-a-Lago in 2022, falsely insisting that Trump had “issued plenty of condemnations” on Fuentes while agreeing that the Hitler-loving livestreamer’s comments about his wife amounted to “racist garbage.”

After ABC’s Jonathan Karl pushed back, Vance claimed that Trump “doesn’t know anything about” Fuentes and “frankly, doesn’t care.” (Trump had shared clips from Fuentes’s internet show before the dinner took place.)

Instead, what matters to Vance is how Trump personally treats his wife—not the fact that the Republican presidential nominee entertains political rhetoric that makes the country significantly less safe for people of color.

“The one thing I like about Donald Trump is he actually will talk to anybody, but just because you talk to somebody doesn’t mean you endorse their views,” Vance said. “Donald Trump has spent a lot of quality time with my wife. Every time he sees her, he gives her a hug, tells her she’s beautiful, and jokes around with her a little bit.

“I’m not at all worried about Donald Trump,” Vance continued. “I’m worried sometimes about these ridiculous attacks. This is what you sign up for when you come into politics. I wish people would keep it focused on me. They’re gonna say what they’re gonna say. My wife’s tough enough to handle it, and that’s a good thing.”

The interview came just two days after Fuentes shockingly revoked his support for Trump, announcing on social media that he and his allies were declaring a “groyper war” against the Trump campaign over the belief that the candidate was headed toward a “catastrophic loss.”

Fuentes’s renunciation hits the Trump campaign at the same time as a slip in support from white men, according to recent polls, despite Trump’s attempts to pander to them this election cycle.