Rachel Maddow nails JD Vance for the one “very easily disprovable lie” he told at the debate

Out MSNBC pundit Rachel Maddow said that even though Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) seemed “much slicker” than Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) at last night’s vice presidential debate, Walz “beat him on all the substantive points.” She then pointed out “one very blunt, very easily disprovable lie on a very important issue that is going to be real trouble for J.D. Vance” — his claim that he has never supported a national abortion ban.

During the debate, co-moderator Norah O’Donnell asked Vance, “In the past, you have supported a federal ban on abortion after 15 weeks. In fact, you said if someone can’t support legislation like that, quote, ‘you are making the United States the most barbaric pro-abortion regime anywhere in the entire world.’ My question is, why have you changed your position?”

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Vance replied, “Well, Norah, first of all, I never supported a national ban.” However, that’s untrue. Vance has said that he “certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally” and was “sympathetic” to the view that a national ban was needed to stop women from traveling to other states to get abortions, CNN noted.

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Commenting on Vance’s response, Maddow said, “J.D. Vance is bluntly on the record and on tape saying ‘I want abortion to be illegal nationwide’…. Saying ‘I never supported a national abortion ban’ when that’s out there is something you’re never going to shake in your campaign, particularly when so much of the country is mobilized on this issue of reproductive rights — the first presidential election after the fall of Roe v. Wade.”

During the debate, Vance tried to come across as a moderate on abortion, saying, “I know a lot of Americans don’t agree with everything that I’ve ever said on this topic” and that he “grew up in a working-class family in a neighborhood where I knew a lot of young women who had unplanned pregnancies and decided to terminate those pregnancies because they feel like they didn’t have any other options.”

Vance specifically mentioned a “dear” friend who said, “If she hadn’t had that abortion, that it would have destroyed her life because she was in an abusive relationship.”

“As a Republican who proudly wants to protect innocent life in this country, who proudly wants to protect the vulnerable,” Vance said, “we’ve got to do so much better of a job at earning the American People’s trust back on this issue where they frankly just don’t trust us.”

Until mid-July Vance’s own Senate campaign website had a section entitled, “End abortion” that declared Vance as “100 percent pro-life” and stated, “Abortion has turned our society into a place where we see children as an inconvenience to be thrown away rather than a blessing to be nurtured.” Vance deleted the section from his website.

Vance has also previously defended a Texas six-week abortion ban’s lack of exceptions for rape and incest, saying in an interview that “two wrongs don’t make a right.”

I got a screenshot before it was wiped.

This was on JD Vance's Senate campaign website until yesterday: pic.twitter.com/HHPB5GYoLu

— Jennifer Bendery (@jbendery) July 17, 2024

Recent polling has shown that majorities of voters in almost every demographic support legalized abortion — the only group that doesn’t is evangelical Protestants. This issue, and Vance’s lie, may spell trouble for Republicans as ten states will vote on abortion-related ballot measures in November, and the issue has typically increased Democratic turnout to the polls.

In his response, Walz mentioned women who have suffered or died from not being able to get medically necessary healthcare because doctors worried they might get prosecuted under abortion bans that have gone into effect since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 court decision that legalized abortion nationwide.

Maddow also noted that during the debate, Vance said, “It’s really rich for Democratic leaders to say Trump is a unique threat to democracy when he peacefully gave over power” when now-President Joe Biden assumed office on January 20, 2021.

Alluding to the January 6, 2021, riots at the Capitol by Trump’s followers after Trump refused to concede that he lost the 2020 election, Maddow joked, “Everybody’s like, ‘What is that alternate universe in which that happened? I would like to visit. It seems nice and much less violent.'”

Harris also hit Trump over his anti-abortion stance

In last month’s presidential debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump gave “tremendous credit” to the Supreme Court’s “great courage” in overturning Roe and allowing individual states to vote on the issue saying, it’s what “everyone wanted.”

During that debate, Trump also refused to say whether he would veto a national abortion ban, saying that such a ban would never come to his desk because the issue has since gone back to the states. During last night’s vice presidential debate, he posted on social media that he would veto such a law.

Harris responded to Trump’s claims at their debate, saying, “In over 20 states, there are Trump abortion bans, which make it criminal for a doctor or nurse to provide health care. In one state, it provides prison for life. Trump abortion bans make no exception, even for rape and incest, which understand what that means: A survivor of a crime of violation to their body does not have the right to make a decision about what happens to their body — that is immoral, and one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government and Donald Trump certainly should not be telling a woman what to do with her body.”

She continued, “I have talked with women around our country. You want to talk about ‘This is what people wanted’? Pregnant women who want to carry a pregnancy to term, suffering from a miscarriage, being denied care in an emergency room because the health care providers are afraid they might go to jail, and she’s bleeding out in a car in the parking lot. She didn’t want that. Her husband didn’t want that. A 12- or 13-year-old survivor of incest being forced to carry a pregnancy to term. They don’t want that.”

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