Perhaps J.D. Vance has become the quiet story of this election cycle. While his counterpart Tim Walz largely has hidden from reporters, Vance has turned into a very effective surrogate for his running mate. Last night, Vance displayed that quality not once but twice in pushing back against media narratives forming to discredit Republicans in general and Donald Trump in particular. 

David wrote about Vance's pushback on the Springfield issue last night on CNN, challenging reporters to actually go to the Ohio community and talk to its residents rather than just regurgitate reports from the local government. Vance also took ABC News to task directly after the debate over the pursuit of the false "national abortion ban" claim from Kamala Harris.

Harris had claimed that Trump would push for a national abortion ban if elected president, a position he has repeatedly denied. Trump had just finished arguing that the matter of abortion was best left to the states, when Linsey Davis decided to argue Harris' point for her:

FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, there she goes again. It's a lie. I'm not signing a ban. And there's no reason to sign a ban. Because we've gotten what everybody wanted. Democrats, Republicans and everybody else and every legal scholar wanted it to be brought back into the states. And the states are voting. And it may take a little time, but for 52 years this issue has torn our country apart. And they've wanted it back in the states. And I did something that nobody thought was possible. The states are now voting. What she says is an absolute lie. And as far as the abortion ban, no, I'm not in favor of abortion ban. But it doesn't matter because this issue has now been taken over by the states.

LINSEY DAVIS: Would you veto a national abortion ban if it came to --

FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, I won't have to because again -- two things. Number one, she said she'll go back to congress. She'll never get the vote. It's impossible for her to get the vote. Especially now with a 50-50 --essentially 50-50 in both senate and the house. She's not going to get the vote. She can't get the vote. She won't even come close to it. So it's just talk. You know what it reminds me of? When they said they're going to get student loans terminated and it ended up being a total catastrophe. The student loans -- and then her I think probably her boss, if you call him a boss, he spends all his time on the beach, but look, her boss went out and said we'll do it again, we'll do it a different way. He went out, got rejected again by the supreme court. So all these students got taunted with this whole thing about -- this whole idea. And how unfair that would have been. Part of the reason they lost. To the millions and millions of people that had to pay off their student loans. They didn't get it for free. But they were saying -- it's the same way that they talked about that, that they talk about abortion.

LINSEY DAVIS: But if I could just get a yes or no. Because your running mate JD Vance has said that you would veto if it did come to your desk.

Bear in mind that Davis would go on to claim that no state allows a baby to be killed after it's born, which is not only false but egregiously so. Democrat governor Ralph Northam proposed allowing it in Virginia; current Democrat governor and Harris running mate Tim Walz eliminated the reporting requirement that exposed the practice in Minnesota. 

As it happens, ABC's Jon Karl tried to follow up with Vance on this point. And Vance demonstrated why he's turning into such a good surrogate:

ABC's Jon Karl swerves for the exit ramp after making the mistake of attacking @JDVance over the media myth of a 'national abortion ban.'

"I think that it's so preposterous for the media to focus so much on an issue where Donald Trump has been crystal clear and not on the fact… pic.twitter.com/w52s5IkfDb

— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) September 11, 2024

"I think that it's so preposterous for the media to focus so much on an issue where Donald Trump has been crystal clear and not on the fact that people can't afford groceries and housing because of Kamala Harris' policies."

"This election is actually quite simple and Kamala Harris, and apparently the media, would like to distract Americans on issues, by the way, that Donald Trump's been crystal clear about, but they're not talking nearly enough."

"This debate didn't talk nearly enough about the fact that Americans are struggling because they can't afford groceries, they can't afford housing, and a lot of their kids are dying of fentanyl overdoses because Kamala Harris has let the Mexican drug cartels take over the southern border."

Will that shut down the narrative about a "national abortion ban"? Probably not, but it certainly shut it down for that discussion. 

It would have been better had Trump given this response in the debate, granted. That's why so many Trump supporters and conservative media outlets have expressed disappointment and pessimism today. Both are fair takeaways, too; Trump played along with the moderators on this and some other questions too much rather than challenge the assumptions and biases on which they were based. 

Vance figured that out by the time the focus shifted to the Spin Room, however. He has better instincts for this kind of engagement, and probably will put them to use in his debate against Walz. And that cuts against another media narrative in this election cycle, which is that choosing Vance was a mistake or at least a missed opportunity. Whatever the opportunity costs that choice may have had, Vance is proving himself adept as a wingman for Trump in the media scrum, and that's perhaps the biggest role that a running mate can play.

And it stands in stark contrast to Walz, who's barely engaged media at all. 

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