Jake Tapper delivered a harsh response Friday to Vice President JD Vance’s boast that Republicans are unfairly branded racist: the line itself, the CNN anchor said, sounded racist.
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Vance, positioning himself as President Donald Trump’s 2028 heir, used his keynote at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas to run through a list of grievances.
“And we were tired of being called racist for noticing that our country was becoming dirtier and poorer and less safe and less prosperous,” Vance said.
The irony was not lost on CNN.
On “The Lead with Jake Tapper,” the host played the clip and didn’t mince words.
“Well, I mean, that does sound a bit racist, actually,” Tapper said. Later, as a panelist unpacked the racially charged remark, Tapper concluded, “That’s what the comment sounds like.”
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That panelist, Corbin Trent, a former communications director for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), called it a “strange sentence to string together” and questioned the logic behind it. If Vance’s explanation for the country supposedly growing “poorer” and “dirtier” was Black and Brown people, Trent said, “then that probably is racist.”
Republican strategist Ashley Davis, a former George W. Bush White House official, however, praised Vance as a strong speaker who rallied the crowd nearly as well as Trump and may have positioned himself to clear the 2028 field.
Vance’s grievance came at a convention already drawing scrutiny for its charged rhetoric, including a crowd member who shouted that Democrats “should be shot” during Ted Cruz’s speech and Cruz’s own warnings about “communists and Islamists.” Vance, who once spread the false claim that Haitian immigrants were eating pets, drew his loudest cheer moments later by taunting a protester he said was waving a Mexican flag.
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