Along with former Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson, he travels the country giving talks and organizing the working class.
▲ Ohio Senator and vice presidential candidate JD Vance during the third day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.Afp Photo
Jim Cason and David Brooks
Correspondents.
The newspaper La Jornada
Thursday, July 18, 2024, p. 20
Milwaukee. JD Vance was introduced at the Republican National Convention with his well-known biography that he has written himself, of how he is a son of the Appalachian mountains (a hillbilly), raised in poverty by a single mother who battled drug addiction and who achieved American dreamas demonstrated by his presence here accepting the nomination for vice presidential candidate in the United States. But for one faction he also represents the new populist far-right movement that is battling with the old guard for control of the party.
It was highlighted that it was a marine who served in Iraq, went to Yale law school, married the daughter of (documented) immigrants from India, and became a senator from Ohio.
Vance told the convention that Trump has given everything to fight for our country Despite all the attacks and abuses against him, even when he was almost killed, but He stood up with a raised fist calling for us to fight for the country.
He recalled that his community was devastated by the North American Free Trade Agreement, losing jobs with Mexico. And with that background, he expressed his nationalist economic vision supposedly in favor of workers (it is worth remembering that his boss is a multimillionaire businessman). “We need a leader who will fight for this country and who responds to the working man, unionized or not, a leader who will not sell out to transnational companies, but who will defend American companies.
A career politician named Joe Biden supported NAFTA, which destroyed middle-class jobs that were sent to Mexico. That same politician supported the war in Iraq. Jobs were sent overseas and our children were sent to wars.
He promised to defend workers and not Wall Street. He said that the “Democrats flooded the country with immigrants” illegal and as a result, Americans had to compete for housing with people who shouldn’t be here.”
The 39-year-old concluded by stressing that the future belongs to Trump. In fact, the night concluded with the song Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrowby Fleetwood Mac, which was also the campaign theme song for another young Southern politician, Democrat Bill Clinton.
Victory against the domes
Just as Clinton represented a shift in her party, Vance is part of an effort to transform the Republican Party. He was far from the unanimous choice and there was a fierce battle to stop him, the presidential candidate’s son, Donald Trump Jr., reported at a forum here this week. He is right where our base is, where the Republican Party is, but that is not where the Republicans are in Washington.. He added: I’m excited that we can now put a lot of that nonsense aside.in reference to what he suggested was a triumph of the new movement against its leaders in the capital.
Vance, Trump Jr., former Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson and others have been traveling the country speaking at small events, building bases among working-class Americans. Traditional party powers like Fox News have largely boycotted these figures. In fact, Carlson was fired from Fox, and Trump’s son said he hadn’t been invited to Fox in about two years.
What they have done instead is build their own distribution networks through podcasts and X-streams. Carlson now has 13 million followers on X and his videos on that platform are viewed by up to 3 million. The book Triggeredby Trump Jr., has reached the top of the bestsellers and hundreds of thousands listen to his podcast every week.
Baker Leavitt, an expert in these new communication channels, explained that in some cases these media They attract audiences of tens of millions – much more than cable channels. If you can create culture and community, there is nothing you can’t do.he said The Day.
The message of this movement is that the party needs to focus on economic issues – inflation, food prices and jobs – and they are achieving that. Donald Trump will close the border, curb inflation and reduce the price of eggsrepeated several speakers at the convention over the past two days. For Vance, Trump Jr. and the others in this camp, there is no justification for offering assistance to Ukraine; the United States has no real national interest, and they argue that the focus should be on improving the lives of Americans by bringing back manufacturing jobs and energy independence.
Resistance from traditional leaders
Not everyone agrees with limiting the narrative to just those issues. Many of the party leaders who gave speeches at the convention this week continued to insist on the party’s traditional agenda: lower taxes, limit spending on social programs, greater support for U.S. military power around the world and even aid to Ukraine.
But JD Vance and Trump Jr. were the star speakers last night, the penultimate one before the culmination of this spectacle, which will be today. That is proof that for now the new right-wing guard is ascendant.
Inside and outside Fiserv Forum, the arena where this convention is being held, there are expressions of what has been an extensive reshuffling of the old party carried out by Trump since 2016 with the help of a new right-wing militancy, part of which has ties to neo-fascist groups.
God has taken the wheel
We must fight against the leftsaid Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, accusing Biden and his people of is seeking to silence our voicesDemocrats and other opponents, he said, “have used the courts, witch hunts and last weekend about five or six bullets – Trump was saved by the hand of God through the Holy Spirit [explicó en parentesis]”. He continued: They break all the rules and as proof he pointed to the pending criminal trials against the former president, which he dismissed as part of the political persecution against his idol. “You have to hit back at those who they bully”And in response to calls for unity, he said, Yes, unity but through victory –that is, only if they win.
The Trumpian narrative of not accepting the guilt of their leader, despite massive evidence, of twisting facts in order to present themselves as victims of political violence, and to present themselves as agents of a cause that is not only political, but divine –God has taken the wheelas one delegate put it – is repeated inside and outside the convention, where loyal media have set up booths and tents where they interview figures from the so-called MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement throughout the day.
Between the caps, clothes, t-shirts and propaganda posters, and since all of this does not revolve around a party, but around an individual at the centre, Trump is omnipresent. And to ensure this, the candidate cannot bear to give up the centre of attention and, therefore, he appeared for the third day in the centre box of the arena to absorb the incessant praise of his subjects.
