Politics
Vance Deployed To Comfort The Americans Trump's Economy Stats Haven't Reached Yet
By Mor Michael, . BSN Network. Satire.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The White House has developed what communications professionals are calling a two-man economic message, in which President Donald Trump announces that the American economy is thriving beyond all historical precedent, and Vice President JD Vance follows closely behind to express sympathy for the Americans for whom that is, somehow, not the experience.
The division of labor is precise. Trump handles the part where everything is great. Vance handles the part where it isn't.
"The economy is the hottest it has ever been in the history of any country," Trump said last week at a rally in Michigan, citing numbers, moods, and the general feeling in the room. "We are doing numbers that nobody has ever seen. The farmers love us. The workers love us. The boats are coming back."
Vance, speaking separately, to a different room, in front of people who did not appear to feel that the boats had come back, said he understood that Americans are worried about prices, concerned about their futures, and aware that things have not been easy.
Asked to reconcile the two messages, a White House spokesperson said the administration believes it is possible to both celebrate America's economic strength and acknowledge the concerns of everyday Americans, and that these two things are not in conflict. She said this with a straight face, which is its own achievement.
Economists reached for comment noted that an economy described by the president as the greatest in recorded human history and an economy described by the vice president as a source of widespread financial anxiety are, technically, different economies, and that only one of them can be the one people are actually living in.
"What you're seeing is a sophisticated communications architecture," said one Republican strategist who asked not to be named because he was trying not to laugh. "The president speaks to the America that exists in the data. The vice president speaks to the America that exists. It's very complementary."
Vance has reportedly been assigned the empathy lane after internal polling showed that Trump's economic optimism, while energetic, was failing to reach voters who had recently checked their grocery receipts. Vance's role, according to three people familiar with the arrangement, is to make those voters feel heard before the next round of numbers comes out explaining why they shouldn't.
It is a role Vance has thrown himself into. He has sat across from workers at diners, nodded carefully at people describing their electric bills, and deployed the phrase "I hear you" with the controlled precision of a man who has been told that is the phrase.
"JD is genuinely connected to the American working class," said a senior White House official. "He grew up in a community that struggled. He wrote a book about it. He has not read the book recently, but the connection is still there."
The White House has not explained what happens when a voter who heard Trump's record-economy speech also watches Vance's I-feel-your-pain tour, which is increasingly the situation, since both men are on television constantly and the internet has not agreed to keep them separated.
For now, the strategy holds. Trump declares victory. Vance offers condolences. The economy, for its part, has not commented.
The story we are making fun of: https://abcnews.com/Politics/depends-trump-vance-offer-slightly-takes-economy/story?id=137010597