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AMY GOODMAN: Andy Kroll, before you go, I wanted to pivot to ask you about Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance. CNN has revealed new details about Vance’s long history of disparaging people who don’t have children. In addition to his comment about “childless cat ladies” that are running the government, talking about everyone he talks about — though she has children — Kamala Harris, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Pete Buttigieg — Vance once described Democrats as, quote, “childless sociopaths.” During a 2020 podcast interview, he claimed childless Americans are making the country less mentally stable.
JD VANCE: I worry that it makes people more sociopathic and, ultimately, our whole country a little bit less — less mentally stable. And, of course, you talk about going on Twitter. Final point I’ll make is, you go on Twitter, and almost always the people who are most deranged and most psychotic are people who don’t have kids at home.
AMY GOODMAN: Andy Kroll, you’re an investigative reporter with ProPublica. You’ve covered JD Vance. Your response to what he continually said in numerous interviews here, the point that he’s making and the movement he represents?
ANDY KROLL: I think it’s a movement that is — that stands for this more extreme version of conservatism. This is not George W. Bush’s, quote-unquote, “compassionate conservative” or even what some of JD Vance’s colleagues in the Senate talk about when they’re talking about trying to be more pro-family, trying to be more supportive of people hoping to have kids, have a family, or just a bigger tent. JD Vance is demonizing huge swaths of Americans, tens of millions of Americans.
And I would add, too, when I read this, some coverage of these comments of his, you know, he then tried to clean them up a bit and say, “Oh, I’m just trolling. But also, you know, I do think that people should have kids, but I’m just trolling.” I mean, Amy, when we talked in Milwaukee about JD Vance, when he said that Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist, is a better news source than Rachel Maddow, you know, he also said this: “Oh, I was just trolling, but also I believe it.” I think that when JD Vance says these things, no matter how he tries to clean them up, this is what he believes. This is how he would govern if he was the vice president of this country, and obviously how he’d continue to govern as a United States senator. So, he’s trying to have it both ways. This is the second, third, fourth time he’s done this.
AMY GOODMAN: Andy —
ANDY KROLL: And I think that voters need to recognize that.
AMY GOODMAN: And, Andy, it’s so interesting that the last piece we talked about with you in Milwaukee was “In Private Speech, J.D. Vance Said the ‘Devil Is Real’ and Praised Alex Jones as a Truth-Teller.” Alex Jones, who denied that the Sandy Hook massacre took place, the killing of all of those children, saying they had gone somewhere and their parents were actors.
ANDY KROLL: Right. I mean, this is just a really extreme version of conservative politics of a Republican Party that JD Vance is embodying when he’s saying these things about either Alex Jones and Sandy Hook or when he’s talking about childless sociopaths. I mean, this is a kind of rhetoric you really don’t usually hear from a presidential ticket candidate trying to win over a broader population of Americans. But again, if he says, “Well, I’m just trolling, or, you know, I’m just making a joke,” the American people need to understand that behind closed doors, as we talked about, Amy, he says he believes these things, and he’s not just trolling. These are positions that he takes. And the public should take that into account when they vote in November.
AMY GOODMAN: Andy Kroll, investigative reporter with ProPublica. We will link to your piece, “Inside Ziklag, the Secret Organization of Wealthy Christians Trying to Sway the Election and Change the Country.”
When we come back, we go to Venezuela, where Nicolás Maduro has been declared the winner of Sunday’s election despite fraud claims by the opposition. Back in 30 seconds.
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