Ohio's Lt. Governor Praises Trump VP Pick JD Vance: 'Articulate Messenger For Working Class America'
Jon Husted, the Lt. Governor of Ohio, joins "Forbes Newsroom" to discuss former President Donald Trump selecting Sen. JD Vance as his running mate, President Joe Biden dropping out of the race, and the issues that matter to Ohioans in 2024.
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00:00Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis with Forbes Breaking News. Joining me now is Ohio's Lieutenant Governor John Husted. Lieutenant Governor, thank you so much for joining me.
00:11Great to be with you.
00:13There was big news coming out of your state last week, so I would love to start the interview with that.
00:20Ohio's Senator J.D. Vance was tapped by former President Donald Trump to be his running mate. What are your thoughts?
00:29J.D. is super smart and somebody, I think, that is going to be a great defender of the America First agenda that Donald Trump has ridden to popularity.
00:41He is an articulate messenger for working class America, and that's going to play great in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, some of the key swing states that the President needs to take to win the presidency back.
00:54And how does he represent those issues that specifically matter to the people of Ohio?
01:01From his real life experiences, he's seen in his hometown of Middletown, Ohio, he's seen the steel industry and manufacturing go away, and the aftermath of that and how it hurt working families and how federal globalization, federal trade policies have hurt the industrial Midwest.
01:22And how Made in America is good for all of America, including Ohio, because you can't do Made in America without Made in Ohio and Pennsylvania and Michigan and Wisconsin, all states important to victory in the presidential race.
01:36Lieutenant Governor, have you spoken with him since the announcement was made last week?
01:41I have a couple of times very briefly traded a few text messages.
01:45I know he's super busy, but he's super excited.
01:48And and, you know, J.D. is he's a cool customer.
01:54He is not going to be overwhelmed by this new notoriety.
02:00And he's he's been tested in his life experiences.
02:04And and I think he will be a great wingman for Donald Trump, helping to elevate them to victory in November.
02:12Governor DeWine said that, let's say Trump and J.D. Vance win, that he would need a type of replacement.
02:19And that replacement would be someone who could be elected both in the primary and general and someone who works hard and represents Ohio.
02:26So let's say J.D. Vance becomes vice president J.D. Vance.
02:30Who would you want to see selected to his seat?
02:34Well, I don't want to get ahead of ourselves.
02:36We have a lot of work to do.
02:37We've got to elect Donald Trump and J.D. Vance to the presidency and vice presidency.
02:42Bernie Moreno to the U.S. Senate here in Ohio, a really critical race for control of the U.S. Senate.
02:48I just want Ohioans to stay focused on that.
02:51It is absolutely 100 percent the governor's decision.
02:54If that day comes and I know he'll make a good choice.
02:58As I'm sure you've seen, Senator Vance has been getting condemned by both sides on the aisle for past remarks on childless cat ladies,
03:06comparing Democratic leaders to them and saying that they shouldn't be leaders because they don't really have a stake in our country.
03:13Steeply offended women on both sides of the aisle.
03:16What's your reaction to those remarks?
03:20You know, I haven't paid attention a lot to that.
03:24I think if you look at J.D. Vance's policies, they're pro-family.
03:28He wants families to stick together.
03:30He knows that a dad in the household is important, that parents having good jobs and having intact families is a great way to raise children.
03:40We've seen the evidence of when the government tries to step in and be the family.
03:46It doesn't work very well.
03:47And I think that he, coming from a broken family himself, realizes the importance of family, the importance of moms and dads and having that nuclear family unit.
03:59And so I think that's where he really is on these things.
04:03I know sometimes we all maybe are guilty of being a little flippant and trying to use examples, maybe to get a little more attention to our points.
04:13But J.D. is really just a guy advocating for families and pro-family policies at the state, federal level.
04:21Aside from the announcement that Senator J.D. Vance is now the vice presidential nominee,
04:27the RNC featured a lot of speeches about why the GOP's platform is better than four more years of President Biden.
04:34But as we know, on Sunday, President Biden did drop out of the race.
04:38So how does the message from Republicans to Ohio voters change that Biden is not in the race and Vice President Kamala Harris is the likely nominee?
04:48Well, I mean, Kamala Harris supported the same policies throughout her time as vice president.
04:55So there's really no different on a policy front.
04:57But if you look back at what she said when she was running for president herself, her views were much more radical and left-leaning than Joe Biden's.
05:05She talked about banning fracking, something vital to the economies of places like Pennsylvania and Ohio and making America energy independent.
05:15She talked about providing government benefits for people who are here illegally, something that I think that most people in America would be completely against.
05:25They want she was the border czar and didn't do a very good job in securing the border and really disappeared on the issue.
05:33I think that that she's completely tied to the Biden-Harris administration policies.
05:39As a matter of fact, if you look at her record, it's far more out of line with what Midwestern values are than what Joe Biden's is.
05:49And let's talk a little bit about those Midwestern values when it comes to the people of Ohio.
05:55What are they most concerned about heading to the ballot box this November?
06:01Well, certainly inflation, because the inflation that the Biden-Harris team put into place with really out of control government spending and policies that were inflationary.
06:13They that's something that people think about.
06:16And it's led to higher interest rates, which makes it harder for working families to afford a mortgage.
06:22Fuel prices are up. Food prices are up and they're not coming down.
06:28And that's what affects, I think, Midwesterners, working class people more than anything.
06:33But they're also affected by the failure to secure the border.
06:37We've had illegals in Ohio who've committed murders. They're bringing drugs into our state.
06:42They're undermining pay for people at entry level positions in our in our in our state.
06:48And that's true throughout the country. And those policies are what I think Ohioans, Midwesterners care a lot about.
06:56Lieutenant Governor, as I noted earlier, this election was really shaken up this past weekend when President Biden did drop out of the race.
07:04What's your reaction to that?
07:08Well, it's a big cover up that the Democrats have been perpetuating almost his entire presidency.
07:14They've known that he's not capable of performing the duties as president from a physical and perhaps cognitive point of view in the way that you would expect someone to be available 24, 7, 365.
07:28And the fact that this was finally exposed with an earlier debate.
07:35I mean, you know, at one point in time, if you were a Republican and you were criticizing his cognitive abilities and the ability to serve, you would have been considered a partisan hack.
07:43But as soon as he failed in the debate and it became apparent to the whole world that the cover up was was in in play, then they quickly ushered him away, forgot what the voters decided in the primary and wanted somebody new.
07:58And look, that is that's the the big lie that everybody knows was being perpetuated.
08:05And it's it really distorted Democratic primary voters of an opportunity to to pick the person that they wanted.
08:14Some Democratic lawmakers have said to that argument that Harris was already on the ticket.
08:19A vote for Biden is a vote for Harris's number two.
08:22Now she's number one, as well as polls suggest that an overwhelming amount of Democratic voters did want Biden to be replaced.
08:29What do you say to that argument?
08:32Well, if they're trying to make the argument that Kamala Harris is the same as Joe Biden, then they should continue to make that argument all the way through the November election.
08:40But I think that they won't try to do that.
08:42They're going to want to revise history.
08:44They're going to want to try to separate Kamala Harris from Joe Biden.
08:47But in some ways, I agree with them that she is more of the same and perhaps a more radical version of Joe Biden's policies.
08:55Lieutenant Governor, I appreciate the time today.
08:57Thank you so much for joining me.