Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), Republican vice presidential candidate, began a rally in battleground Michigan on Friday by blasting billionaire Mark Cuban.
Cuban, a surrogate for Vice President Kamala Harris and her campaign, landed in hot water for saying the day prior on ABC’s The View that former President Donald Trump doesn’t surround himself with “strong, intelligent women.”
“I thought to myself, ‘Well, Mark, you know, my wife is way out of your league, and so is Melania Trump,’” Vance told rallygoers. “So is Susie Wiles, who’s running the Trump campaign.”
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Cuban’s comments, which he’s since apologized for, marked the latest self-inflicted wound to the Harris campaign from close allies.
A remark by President Joe Biden assailing Trump supporters as “garbage” earlier in the week has dominated GOP talking points to voters in the final stretch before Election Day, a gaffe that the White House first downplayed as criticism directed at comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s demeaning punchlines about Puerto Rico at a Trump rally. However, the White House press office got caught trying to alter the transcript of Biden’s remarks in the clean-up effort.
“I wish that Mark Cuban and Kamala Harris and their entire campaign stopped insulting the people they disagreed with and maybe talked about Kamala Harris’s record a little bit,” Vance said. “But the reason, I think they decided to insult people is because they don’t have a record to run on.”
Cuban had accused Trump of being intimidated by “strong, intelligent women” and that those like former GOP White House hopeful Nikki Haley “will call him on his nonsense with reproductive rights and how he sees and treats and talks about women.” He apologized on social media, posting he was sorry “to anyone who felt slighted or upset by my response” on X.
The Trump and Harris campaigns are aggressively courting women as a key voting bloc before people head to ballot boxes Tuesday.
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Vance took further aim at Harris over what he described as her “softball” media interview strategy, trying to draw a contrast between his and Trump’s more frequent interactions with the press and hard-line questions. He defined a gaffe as when “Kamala Harris accidentally tells the American people what she actually believes.”
“The thing about a softball interview is that you’ve got to be able to hit a softball,” Vance said. “I don’t know that our illustrious vice president could actually hit a T-ball based on what she does during some of these interviews.”
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Meanwhile, the Harris campaign is projecting confidence, telling reporters that undecided voters are breaking for her in the final days. The campaign didn’t address the Cuban remarks Friday but argued Trump’s rhetoric is helping Democrats.
“The last things they are hearing is the vice president talking about how she’s focused on solving their problems, and Donald Trump is going to do nothing to help them, and I think that’s going to have some real power for these final folks in these final days,” a senior campaign official said.