Georgia Democrat shares unlikely tie with potential Trump VP pick [View all]

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- from Politically Georgia, AJC, July 11, 2024:
https://www.ajc.com/politics/politically-georgia/pg-am-georgia-democrat-shares-unlikely-tie-with-potential-trump-vp-pick/CJWHKBQS5ZCGVEWS73H4WJYCNA/

Georgia Democrat shares unlikely tie with potential Trump VP pick
By Greg Bluestein, Tia Mitchell, Patricia Murphy and Adam Van Brimmer

As former President Donald Trump narrows his choices for a vice presidential running mate, skeletons from their closets are quietly emerging. And none has greater Georgia resonance than the unlikely ties between U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance and a local liberal.

The Ohio Republican — long seen as one of Trump’s most likely picks — was roommates with Democratic state Sen. Josh McLaurin of Sandy Springs in their first year at Yale Law School.

But there’s more. McLaurin, as we’ve reported previously, has produced texts from Vance in which he wrote that the GOP has “only itself to blame” for Trump’s rise to power.

“We are, whether we like it or not, the party of lower-income, lower-education white people, and I have been saying for a long time that we need to offer those people SOMETHING (and hell, maybe even expand our appeal to working class black people in the process) or a demagogue would,” Vance wrote in the text. “We are now at the point.”

The text continues: “I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical (expletive) like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler. How’s that for discouraging?”

Back when McLaurin first shared screenshots of the texts in 2022, they went viral — and “America’s Hitler” briefly trended. Vance’s aides haven’t disputed the texts but said his criticism of Trump and other GOP leaders was old news.

Trump is expected to decide between Vance, Florida U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and other contenders by the start of the Republican National Convention next week.

McLaurin, who's a Democratic state senator from Sandy Springs (swing district in the affluent north Atlanta suburbs) was a guest on the Politically Georgia radio show / podcast today ("Black faith leaders in Georgia stand strongly with Biden" ) --
https://megaphone.link/CMGA2034917936
https://open.spotify.com/episode/7y2F5E0RgtJPj0f52B0qgY

McLaurin's description of his old Yale Law School roommate J.D. Vance makes Vance sound like a more well educated version of the prototypical "white grievance" Trump supporter -- someone bitter about the supposed condescension of "liberal elites" toward salt-of-the-earth white working class people like himself. And, obviously, also a craven political opportunist whose excuse for a moral compass can be recalibrated on a moment's notice.

McLaurin talked about knowing not only Vance but also Yale Law School classmate Vivek Ramaswamy, who he said was always focused more on his entrepreneurial activities than on his studies. Imagine having two toxic creeps like that in your circle!

See also:
J.D. Vance said Trump might be 'America's Hitler' in 2016 text message (The Week, April 18, 2022) - https://theweek.com/2022-election/1012706/jd-vance-said-trump-might-be-americas-hitler-in-2016-text-message