Major news outlets are largely not treating what happened to Donald Trump’s last running mate as a central storyline in their coverage of his new one.
Trump dropped former Vice President Mike Pence from the ticket after Pence refused the then-president’s demands to overturn the results of the 2020 election and blamed Trump for a mob of his supporters storming the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 (some of the rioters chanted “Hang Mike Pence”). By contrast, Trump’s newly minted running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, is an election denier who says he would have backed Trump’s plot if he had been in Pence’s place and downplays both Trump’s responsibility for the January 6 insurrection and the danger Pence says Trump put him in.
I made the case on Friday that the most important story surrounding Trump’s new running mate would be why he needed a new one — to replace Pence, who had proven stubbornly loyal to the constitutional order.
But that aspect has largely been downplayed or even ignored altogether in several leading news outlets’ initial coverage of Vance’s Tuesday nomination, according to a Media Matters review.
Beltway tipsheets ignored the story.
Political newsletters which often drive news coverage throughout the day evinced no interest in explaining why Pence is no longer on the ticket in their Tuesday morning editions.
Politico Playbook and Semafor Principals newsletters each devoted substantial attention to Vance’s nomination — but neither mentioned Pence or any aspect of his replacement’s January 6 commentary.
Mike Allen’s Axios AM newsletter, meanwhile, reported only that “Trump has genuine affection for Vance — rare for Trump, and a real change from his reasoning for picking Mike Pence in 2016,” while PunchBowl News AM included the following paragraph in its write-up:
But neither reminded their readers what happened to Pence after that.
The Big 3 broadcast news networks briefly touched on why Vance is replacing Pence.
News shows on ABC, CBS, and NBC all mentioned that Vance would have subverted the election when Pence would not, but only as asides.
On NBC’s Nightly News, Garrett Haake read from a Biden-Harris campaign statement which said, “Donald Trump picked J.D. Vance as his running mate because Vance will do what Mike Pence wouldn't on January 6: bend over backwards to enable Trump and his extreme MAGA agenda.”
ABC’s Terry Moran noted on Good Morning America that Vance “has long since proved his loyalty to Donald Trump, including telling [ABC anchor] George [Stephanopoulos] last year that, unlike Mike Pence, he would have accepted the challenges to the electoral count that Trump supporters did and stopped that count on January 6.”
CBS was the only Big 3 network to cover the issue on both its Monday evening and Tuesday morning shows.
On CBS Evening News, Ed O’Keefe reported that Vance “signaled earlier this year he would do something that Mike Pence wouldn’t back on January 6, 2021, allow challenges to the election results from 2020 in several states.”
And Major Garrett said on CBS Mornings: “J.D. Vance would have intervened as vice president, and I don’t believe there was any issue that was more important to this calculus and decision to former President Trump than J.D. Vance’s position on that question.”
Major newspapers did little better — and, in some cases, worse.
USA Today did not mention Pence — at all — in the story about Vance’s nomination that ran on the paper’s front page Tuesday.
The Wall Street Journal’s front-page report did address the Pence issue — in a single sentence in the story’s 34th paragraph:
A separate Journal story detailing “Five Things to Know About J.D. Vance, Trump’s VP Pick,” did not mention Pence or Vance’s support for election subversion (it does note that Vance “has echoed Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was rigged”).
The New York Times’ front-page nomination story did discuss the reason for Pence’s replacement in detail — but relegated those details to the article’s final paragraphs:
In news media appearances, Mr. Vance has echoed Mr. Trump’s widely debunked claims that the 2020 election was stolen. In an interview with ABC News this year, he backed schemes to create alternative slates of electors in key battleground states that Mr. Trump lost, saying, “We needed to have multiple slates of electors, and I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there.”
More recently, Mr. Vance has maintained that Mr. Trump had legitimate grievances over how the election was conducted, even as most of Mr. Trump’s claims of voter fraud have been debunked. And he has said that if he had been vice president on Jan. 6, 2021, he would have encouraged Congress to consider false slates of pro-Trump electors before certifying the election.
Mr. Trump’s vice president at the time, Mike Pence, bucked Mr. Trump’s calls to reject Mr. Biden’s victory in 2020. After Mr. Trump publicly criticized his vice president’s refusal as disloyal, some Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol chanted threats to hang Mr. Pence, who was forced to flee the mob, which had come within 40 feet of him.
But Mr. Vance told CNN this year that he was “extremely skeptical that Mike Pence’s life was ever in danger.”
The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times made the reason Vance is replacing Pence a more prominent focus in their front-page nomination stories.
The Washington Post’s version notes in its eighth paragraph, “After breaking with his previous vice president, Mike Pence, over Pence’s refusal to reject the 2020 election results, Trump’s selection of Vance brings the former president a No. 2 who has in recent years demonstrated unflinching loyalty to him.” The story returns to the subject in paragraph 24:
Vance has also echoed Trump’s false claims about widespread fraud in the 2020 election and has indicated that he would have taken a different path on Jan. 6, 2021, than Pence. Vance told ABC News in February that if he had been vice president, he would have allowed Congress to consider fraudulent slates of pro-Trump electors.
Biden’s campaign immediately seized on Vance’s previous remarks to attack Trump’s running mate pick on Monday.
“Donald Trump picked J.D. Vance as his running mate because Vance will do what Mike Pence wouldn’t on January 6: bend over backwards to enable Trump and his extreme MAGA agenda, even if it means breaking the law and no matter the harm to the American people,” Biden campaign chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a statement.
The Los Angeles Times, meanwhile, reported beginning in its story’s 11th paragraph:
In a remarkable departure from modern political history, Trump picked a running mate different from his first term, former Vice President Mike Pence. Pence lost favor with Trump when he refused his former boss’ calls to reject the 2020 election results.
Pence’s choice to certify the 2020 election results on Jan. 6, 2021, the day pro-Trump protesters stormed the Capitol, prompted chants of “Hang Mike Pence!” Pence said earlier this year that he would not endorse Trump for president.
“Donald Trump picked J.D. Vance as his running mate because Vance will do what Mike Pence wouldn’t on Jan. 6: bend over backwards to enable Trump and his extreme MAGA agenda, even if it means breaking the law and no matter the harm to the American people,” said Jen O’Malley Dillon, Biden-Harris 2024 chair, in a statement.
