JD Vance ‘reeks of inauthenticity,’ Republican strategist says

Swing voters aren't buying what Senator JD Vance is selling, according to a Republican strategist.

Sarah Longwell is director of Republican Voters Against Trump — a group of conservatives who do not support former President Donald Trump. She said she has spoken to swing voters and that their overwhelming response to Vance is thinking he is a «phony.»

“The thing that is killing JD Vance is that voters, and I have listened to tons of swing voters since he was picked, and they don’t like him at all, they think he seems like a phony,” she told MSNBC’sInside with Jen Psaki.

She said that swing voters are very aware of Vance's flip-flopping on Trump. In the past, Vance has described some of Trump's voter base as being racist, said he might consider voting for Hillary Clinton to stop Trump's ascendancy, and has called Trump a «fraud,» a «moral disaster,» a «cynical a**hole,» a «bad man,» and «America's Hitler.»

“[Voters] also get … it’s like vibes, right? Voters can smell inauthenticity and that’s what JD Vance reeks of to them,” she said.

Vance flipped his feelings on Trump and MAGA right around 2022, when he was planning to run for Ohio's vacant Senate seat and needed the former president's endorsement.

But hypocrisy and flip-flopping are increasingly survivable in modern electoral politics. Democrats, including presumptive 2024 presidential candidate Kamala Harris, have been using another descriptor when discussing Vance: weird. Since July 23, Harris's campaign has called Trump and Vance «weird» in at least 14 posts.

“My attitude is, I’m just gonna be who I am. If they want to attack me for whatever they’re going to attack me on that’s fine. You just have to power through and do your thing,” Vance said on a podcast in