A former MSNBC host unloaded on Donald Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance on Friday over a late-night post Vance made defending his choice to “change my tune” on the MAGA leader.
Vance made a lengthy post on X, writing: “If you were to ask what caused me to change my tune about President Trump from 2016 to 2020, I could give you a few reasons. But what we’re seeing in Springfield really drives it home.”
Vance cited “skyrocketing” housing prices, as well as rising cases of communicable diseases, crashes, crimes and even insurance premiums. He also decried the government’s response to those alleged societal ills.
“Confronted with many of their citizens begging for relief, our broken elites offer only scorn,” he said.
Vance then alluded to a racist and baseless conspiracy theory in the city, which he and Trump perpetuated this week.
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“‘It is racist,’ they tell us, to get angry at being unable to afford a home, or to complain about being unable to drive a car safely down the streets paved by your neighbors, or to call 911 because strangers are slaughtering geese in a public park. They have ignored this town’s problems for years.”
Vance said he and Trump condemn violence and threats of such against the city and its residents, defended Trump against accusations he’s a “threat to democracy” and then lodged the same accusation against Vice President Kamala Harris, doing so by espousing shades of Great Replacement Theory, a racist conspiracy theory that immigrants are being brought into the country to pad Democratic voter rolls.
“It is Kamala Harris who would rather import new voters than persuade the ones who are already here,” he said.
Mehdi Hasan, a British-American journalist who previously hosted “The Mehdi Hasan Show” on MSNBC, slammed Vance’s comments on X.
“You’re a racist disgrace and I hope your mixed-race kids, the grandchildren of brown immigrants from the ‘third world’, grow up and disown you.
Fellow journalist Meghan McCarthy joined Hasan in rebuking Vance.
“If this has been happening in Springfield since 2016 why haven’t you done anything about it? And why haven’t local leaders been voted out?”
McCarthy added: “You can dress this dog whistle for violence in all the purple prose you want, but everyone knows your kids get secret service protection at school while the kids who evacuated today get to be pawns in your game.