EXCLUSIVE: BYRON CENTER, Mich. — Donald Trump's running mate defended the former president when pressed about allies and fellow Republicans advising him to stick to policy and messaging instead of "off the cuff" comments targeting Vice President Harris.
"I think one of the things people actually love about Donald Trump in politics is he’s not unwilling to speak off the cuff. He says what’s actually on his mind. He’s not always filtered. I think that’s a good thing and part of his appeal," GOP vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance of Ohio said Wednesday in a national exclusive interview with Fox News Digital.
But Vance, speaking ahead of a campaign event in battleground Michigan, also emphasized that "if you look at this race, we’re talking about policy. That’s 90% of what we’re doing. And I think that’s going to keep on happening."
Harris has been riding a wave of momentum — witnessed in public opinion polling, in her soaring fundraising and in her large crowds she's attracting on the campaign trail — in the three and a half weeks since she replaced President Biden atop the Democrats' 2024 ticket.
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While criticizing Harris over key issues such as border security, crime and inflation, Trump has also continuously slammed the vice president and insulted her during speeches, news conferences and in social media posts.
Sources in Trump's political orbit tell Fox News that top advisers to the former president are quietly aiming to persuade him to tamp down the insults to Harris and the questioning of the vice president's racial identity and instead focus on branding her an ultra-liberal and spotlighting her stance on the border, crime and inflation
Trump allies are also publicly pitching Trump to refocus his attention.
"You’ve got to make this race not on personalities," former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Monday in an interview on Fox News' "America's Newsroom." "Stop questioning the size of her crowds and start questioning her position."
McCarthy emphasized that Trump has "a short time frame to do it, so don’t sit back. Get out there and start making the case."
During an interview Tuesday with Bret Baier on Fox News' "Special Report," former U.N. ambassador and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley — Trump's top rival from the Republican presidential primaries earlier this year — also had some unsolicited advice for her former boss.
Haley, who reiterated that she wants Trump to win the presidential election, emphasized that "the campaign is not going to win talking about crowd sizes. It's not going to win talking about what race Kamala Harris is. It's not going to win. Talking about whether she's dumb. It's not. You can't win on those things. The American people are smart. Treat them like they're smart."
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Following his interview with Fox News Digital, Vance was also asked about the criticism of Trump from fellow Republicans as he took questions from reporters at the conclusion of his campaign event at a trucking company in this southwestern Michigan town just south of Grand Rapids.
"To the people who say that Donald Trump should do something different, they had an opportunity to make Donald Trump do something different by challenging him over three separate primaries, every single one of which he won. I think Donald Trump has earned the right to run the kind of campaign that he wants to run," Vance emphasized.
But the senator added that "if you listen to what Donald J. Trump says, if you look at what I say, we are prosecuting the case against Kamala Harris on policy."
And taking aim at Harris, Vance charged that "we’d much rather have an American president who is who he is, who’s willing to offend us, who’s willing to tell us the truth, who isn’t a fake who hides behind a teleprompter."
The Harris campaign has characterized some of Trump's recent criticism of the vice president as "unhinged," his recent interviews as "disastrous," and the agenda he's pushing as "dangerous and bizarre."
