Media Matters' Matt Gertz highlights the media's responsibility to cover J.D. Vance's ties to extremism and stance on January 6
Gertz: “We’re really not seeing the focus needed on that from much of the mainstream press”
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Media Matters' Matt Gertz highlights the media's responsibility to cover J.D. Vance's ties to extremism and stance on January 6
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From the July 16, 2024, edition of SiriusXM's The Michelangelo Signorile Show
MICHELANGELO SIGNORILE (HOST): So, you wrote about Trump's pick of J.D. Vance, and in particular, how media covered it and what we didn't hear, which was about Tucker Carlson, who really helped to get J.D. Vance elected, give him the kind of visibility in the Republican Party that he has, and really helped him with getting Donald Trump to pick him. Talk a little bit about that.
MATT GERTZ (GUEST): Sure. I mean, I think there are two main stories that I think are the most important coming out of this VP pick. First of all, what happened to Donald Trump's previous vice president? We all seem to have just sort of accepted that it is normal, that someone who previously ran for president twice with a particular running mate no longer has that running mate by his side, and went through a whole process to get a new one. And the reason for that, of course, is because Mike Pence, Donald Trump's vice president, defied him on January 6, 2021. You know, Mike Pence has truly awful politics, but in this one instance, he showed quite a bit of spine and refused Donald Trump's demands for him to try to overturn the election.
And so, you know, because of that, Pence is out. Trump needs someone new to replace him. Everyone who was on the shortlist was working very, very hard to prove to Donald Trump that, if they were picked, they would never have done what Mike Pence did. And so eventually, Donald Trump, settled on J.D. Vance, someone who says that the election in 2020 was rigged, someone who says that he would have taken a different path than Pence if he had been vice president --
SIGNORILE: Right, he would not have certified the election.
GERTZ: Yeah, he would've given Donald Trump exactly what he wanted and tried to overturn the results, using this cockamamie legal theory that basically no one credible said makes any sense. And, of course, he says that, you know, that Donald Trump is not to blame for the January 6th insurrection that followed. And so because of all of that, you know, J.D. Vance could be on the short list.
What carried him over the top, though, was his relationship with Tucker Carlson. You know, the -- how to describe -- you know, the purveyor of white nationalist talking points, the, you know, extremist, radical, former Fox News host, who helped put Vance on the map, and in the final days was crucial to his success in getting named vice president, because he was on the phone with Donald Trump, telling him to do it.
You know, so those I think are the two main stories that are important in assessing J.D. Vance's vice presidential selection. And, you know, I think, we're really not seeing the focus needed on that from much of the mainstream press.