JD Vance reiterates support for FTC’s Lina Khan

“I don’t think you want this massive cap on lower-income families that you have right now,” the Ohio senator and fellow Donald Trump running mate told CBS. Face the Nation. He did not provide details on who would qualify if the tax credit were expanded from the current maximum of $2,000 per child.

“It’s called the child tax credit, and we should expand the child tax credit,” Vance said.

Vance appeared on three network political talk shows Sunday after a shaky start to the GOP ticket, marred in part by resurfaced comments in which he disparaged Democrats, including Vice President Kamala Harris, as “childless cat ladies.”

Vance, a 40-year-old father of three, also suggested a lower tax rate for parents than for people without children.

His comments drew criticism from both sides. Conservative commentator Tomi Lahren attacked the senator on social media in response to the cat lady’s remarks. “I like JD Vance, but I’m not sure about the calculus the VP pick checks,” Lahren said in a post on X on July 25.

Asked Sunday on CNN State of the Union about how he would appeal to swing state voters emboldened by the remarks, Vance accused the Harris campaign of lying about what he said.

“I criticized Kamala Harris because she is part of a set of ideas that exist in American leadership that are anti-family,” he said. “I never criticize people for not having children.”

Trump defended Vance at a rally in Bozeman, Montana, on Friday.

“He really stepped up,” Trump said. “I said you got your sea legs, you know, because they hit him with a lot of crap the first day.”

Pressure on Trump and Vance has increased since President Joe Biden ended his re-election bid in July. Harris’ emergence as the Democratic front-runner and her choice of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate shook up the campaign, largely erasing Trump’s lead in many polls.

An Aug. 5-9 New York Times and Siena College poll showed Harris with 50 percent support among likely voters in the battleground states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, compared to Trump’s 46 percent in each state.

Vance skipped a Senate vote on a bipartisan tax plan in early August, prompting attacks from Democrats who accused him of giving up his campaign job.

The $78 billion package would have allowed more of the $2,000 tax credit to go to those whose income is too low to qualify for the full credit. Senators failed to reach the 60 votes needed to overcome a Republican filibuster.

Vance dismissed the recent tax package vote as a messaging ploy.

“It was a show vote,” Vance said. “And if I had been there, it would have failed.”

Big business

Vance reiterated his support for Federal Trade Commission Chairman Lina Khan, a Biden appointee who has focused his antitrust efforts on big tech companies.

“I don’t agree with Lina Khan on every issue, to be clear, but I think she’s been very smart in trying to go after some of these big tech companies that monopolize what we’re allowed to say in our own our country,” Vance said on CBS.

The comments signal that big tech companies like Alphabet Inc’s Google. could continue to face legal challenges under the Trump-Vance administration. The Justice Department already has two antitrust cases pending against the company.