Could JD Vance sink the Trump campaign?
Plus, a peek inside Eric Hovde's "meme stock" investments.
New polling shows that GOP vice presidential candidate JD Vance is exceptionally unpopular in key Midwestern states — particularly his home state of Ohio. In the aggregate, Vance has a -6 net favorability rating nationally. This compares poorly to the +19 favorability average of all vice presidential selections since 1990. This matches up with a poll conducted by The Economist/YouGov Poll: 34% of those surveyed had a favorable view of Vance whereas 42% were unfavorable.
But in the Heartland, things are even more troubling for Vance. A CNN/SSRS poll found that, per Newsweek, “28 percent of people hold a favorable view of Vance in Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin, with 44 percent saying they have an unfavorable view of the MAGA senator.”
Part of Vance’s poor performance may have to do with some of his more unsavory comments regarding parenting and abortion. Since securing the Republican nomination, clips of Vance deriding single women without children and calling for a national abortion ban have resurfaced.
https://x.com/HeartlandSignal/status/1813706583790039224
In a 2021 clip of Vance on then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s show, the Ohio senator called out “cat ladies” who “live in one-bedroom apartments in New York City,” and “are obsessed with their jobs. They’re obsessed with their wealth and with their fortunes.”
Thus, Vance proclaimed, these women have no “direct stake” in the well-being of the United States and “hate normal Americans for choosing family over these ridiculous D.C. and New York status games.” The remarks were made in reference to Harris, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).
However, in a recent interview with former Fox News host Megyn Kelly, Vance attempted to walk back some of his comments.
“This is about criticizing the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-child. We have to ask ourselves, Megan, why do we have masking of toddlers years after the pandemic ended?” Vance said. He then went on to falsely claim that Harris — whose boss just released a 2025 budget that would restore the 2021 child tax credit — was against targeted financial aid to families with children.
“Why do we have the Harris campaign coming out this very morning, Megan, and saying that we should not have the child tax credit, which lowers tax rates for parents of young children?” Vance (falsely) concluded. “It's because they have become anti-family and anti-kid, and I'm proud to stand up for parents, and I hope that parents out there recognize that I'm a guy who wants to fight for you.”
Eric Hovde profited from so-called ‘meme stocks’ despite decrying them
Eric Hovde, the GOP’s candidate for one of Wisconsin’s Senate seats, appears to have profited off of so-called “meme stocks” despite having publicly derided their functionality.
In early 2021, firms like GameStop and AMC Theaters saw their stock values artificially inflated after certain corners of social media (like the subreddit r/wallstreetbets) encouraged individuals to invest in the floundering companies that were favorites of certain hedge funds for short selling. Along with making smaller investors millions of dollars, analysts also saw the short squeezing as a way to get back at large hedge funds that manipulate the market with short selling.
“For all those people playing in the options market now the meme stocks we’ve all heard about the meme stocks started with GameStop. And AMC, why do I show you this, because this is probably one of the best examples of how broken our capital markets and equity markets are. These are two companies that are fundamentally busted,” Hovde said at an economic forum in 2021.
However, according to a US Senate Personal Financial Disclosure, Hovde reported capital gains between $202,503 and $2,005,000 from his GameStop holdings and between $368,208 and $3,156,000 from his AMC holdings.
Such wheeling and dealing shouldn’t be surprising. Hovde’s financial reports indicate his bank, Sunwest Bank, is entangled with a variety of shady foreign investors and governments. For instance, in 2006 Hovde acquired a $9.6 million stake in the Dutch bank ABN Amro. Amro was later fined $500 million for crafting fraudulent documents that would hide their transactions with sanctioned countries like Cuba, Libya and Iran.