CNN senior data reporter Harry Enten said Friday that Democratic and media attacks on Republican Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio as a “knockout” are undoubtedly hurting his popularity.
Corporate news networks and Democrats have repeatedly used the word to portray former President Donald Trump and Vance as “kooks,” with CNN and MSNBC using the term more than 160 times each on Monday alone, the Daily Caller News Foundation reported. CNN News Central's Enten said the “attack” appears to be “working,” given that Google searches for “kook” related to Vance have increased and his favorability ratings are particularly low among the vice presidential candidates. (RELATED: MSNBC guest claims J.D. Vance's desire to have more kids is “kind of racist”)
clock:
CNN data expert says 'weird line of attack' on JD Vance 'definitely' hurts his favorability pic.twitter.com/JA3W9Nnt8J
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) August 2, 2024
“These are Google searches for 'weird.' This is compared to the last three months. Look at that. It's up 22 percent in the last week. Wow,” Enten told host Kate Bolduin. “In the last three days, searches for 'weird' are up 32 percent. Of course, people search for 'weird' all the time. When you see a spike like this, you ask yourself, 'Wait a second, something is definitely driving this. People are interested in the word 'weird.' And so Kate Bolduin's question, of course, is, why are people interested in the word 'weird?'”
“The rise in Google searches for 'weird' is a result of these things being searched for as 'weird,'” he added. “Tim Waltz, who you mentioned, started that catchphrase. Make America Great Again, what about Republicans? What about JD Vance? So the fact is that searches for the word 'weird' are on the rise, and all of the topics searched for under 'weird' are political, they're all attack material… It shows that it's permeating the zeitgeist, and it really shows that what people are looking up online is unusual political attacks.”
Since Trump selected Vance as his running mate on July 15, the first day of the Republican National Convention, interviews and speeches he gave before winning the Senate election have resurfaced, including criticism of prominent childfree Democrats, including Vice President Kamala Harris, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
In a 2021 interview on Daily Caller co-founder Tucker Carlson's “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Vance mocked Democratic women, calling them “kidfree catty women.”
“He was already the least popular vice presidential candidate coming out of the convention, earlier this month, minus five points in the mid-July AP-NORC poll and minus six points in the ABC News-Ipsos poll. But if you look this week, in the most recent polling data, J.D. Vance's net favorability rating in AP-NORC has dropped eight points to minus 13 points,” Enten said. “How about ABC News-Ipsos, which has dropped to minus 15 points? The attacks on J.D. Vance seem to be working. Of course, one of the big attacks is that he's a weirdo. And we're definitely seeing more searches of his name and other things related to the Republican Party.”
“If you look at people like Sarah Palin and Dan Quayle, people who have been notoriously bad as vice presidents, they all had net favorability ratings of plus 10 or higher,” Enten added. “The fact that he's been disliked so quickly, I think, suggests that there's something special about J.D. Vance. And it's not just weird. I think a weird line of attack definitely plays a role. There's a visceral dislike of him, as these numbers show.”
As an independent, nonpartisan news service, all content produced by the Daily Caller News Foundation is available free of charge to any legitimate news publisher with a large readership. All republished articles must include our logo, reporter byline, and affiliation with the DCNF. If you have any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact us at licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
