Vice President JD Vance said the GOP’s bruising November losses were a blunt warning that the party must give President Donald Trump’s working-class coalition a reason to show up without Trump driving turnout.
During a Thursday morning fireside chat with Breitbart‘s Matt Boyle, Vance conceded that modern-day Republican voters who support Trump’s MAGA movement are “a fundamentally new phenomenon in American politics,” distinct from the Republican Party of earlier eras, such as those of former Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.
This new coalition is far more likely to buck traditional Republican orthodoxy and has led to a new and sometimes uneasy alliance in the GOP.
VANCE PRAISES MAHA MOVEMENT IN WAKE OF GOP CONCERNS OF SHAKEN SUPPORT
“There is an effort to try to wrest control of the Republican Party away from the voters and away from the coalition that really delivered the big victory in 2024,” Vance told Boyle. “I think it’s a huge mistake.”
Trump-aligned voters generally show up for the president when he is running for office. However, they failed to back the Republican gubernatorial candidates in New Jersey and Virginia this month, helping Govs.-elect Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) and Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) to win by double digits.
Ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, Vance offered a stark warning and a post-mortem analysis for his fellow party members.
“We’ve got to motivate them,” Vance said. “We’ve got to get them out to vote. I think it’s one of the lessons that we learned in Virginia and New Jersey, is that when Donald Trump is not on the ballot, you’ve got to give people something to actually believe in, something to be inspired by, to get out there and vote. They’re not going to vote just because you have an R next to your name; you’ve got to speak to this new working-class coalition.”
Republicans face a tough climate next year in retaining control of the House and the Senate as Trump’s sinking approval numbers threaten to take down GOP House members. The president has a 57% disapproval rating and a 40% approval rating, according to the Economist.
“And the one worry that I have when I look at so many of our great congressional allies, I do think that some of our folks in Congress they want to go back to the Republican Party of 20 years ago,” Vance added. “That Republican Party was a republican party that lost and that couldn’t successfully govern the country. We need to lean into this new coalition do a better job serving them, and that’s how we get them to show up in these midterm elections, so that we can win not just presidential races, but midterm races too.”
Vance also pushed the MAGA coalition to focus its ire on the Left, even as the movement struggles to agree on key matters, such as how far to support Israel, Nick Fuentes and the spread of white nationalism, and files regarding the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“We have to remember that we have a lot more in common than we do not in common, and that the disagreements that animate the Republican Party, while they matter and they’re important, I think these debates should happen,” Vance explained. “They should happen in podcasts, and they should happen in the media. They should happen on the Op-Ed pages.”
“My attitude is, let these debates play out, but don’t let the debates that … we’re having internally, blind us to the fact that we are up against a radical Leftist movement that murdered my friend a couple of months ago,” Vance added, referring to the assassination of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk. “And that would throw many people in the Trump administration in prison, not for doing anything illegal, but for not following the far Left’s agenda. That is the real opponent here.”
The vice president then implored MAGA supporters to “focus on the enemy.”
“Have our debates, but focus on the enemy so that we can win victories that matter for the American people,” he added. “That’s my message.”