'Did they vet this dude at all?': Newly unearthed J.D. Vance audio shocks analysts

J.D. Vance accused the online retail giant Amazon of funding Black Lives Matter so rioters would burn down brick-and-mortar competitors.

Donald Trump's running mate made that unsupported allegation in 2021 at a conservative think tank during a speech on "woke capital," suggesting that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos had encouraged the riots that occasionally broke out alongside the largely peaceful protests the year before in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd, reported the Christian Science Monitor.

“Who benefits most when small businesses on Main Street are destroyed?" Vance told the gathering. "Who wants to see their competitors unable to deliver goods and services to people, so that you get it delivered in your brown Amazon box? Jeff Bezos. The people who are invested in destroying America via our corporate class are also getting rich from it. This is an important piece of the puzzle to understand.”

ALSO READ: Harris has figured out Trump’s greatest liability

Vance has described U.S. corporations like Disney and Budweiser as enemies of conservative values, saying they promote "woke" values like diversity, equity, and inclusion, but rather than characterizing those efforts as pandering to consumers, the "Hillbilly Elegy" author describes their motivations as more sinister.

“If you peel back the onion, what you find is that the businesses that are most connected and most devoted to destroying our values are also benefiting financially from it,” Vance told the conference hosted in suburban Washington, D.C.

The Trump-Vance campaign did not provide any evidence his claims about Amazon funding violence that broke out during the summer 2020 protests, much of which was later proven in court to have been carried out by white supremacist agitators, and a spokesman for the vice presidential candidate doubled down when asked to comments on his remarks to the Claremont Institute.

“Jeff Bezos’s companies promoted and donated to Black Lives Matter as BLM protestors destroyed countless brick and mortar businesses across the country – the very businesses that Amazon counts as direct competitors,” said Vance spokesman William Martin. “Woke billionaires like Bezos have taken over corporations across the country and turned them against the American people. Senator Vance is absolutely right to call them out and will continue to do so.”

Left-leaning historian Thomas Frank, who has written extensively on American populism, said Vance had identified a phenomenon he had analyzed himself but took it to an extreme and baseless conclusion by accusing Bezos of engaging in a sinister plot to destroy small businesses.

“This combination of liberalism and capitalism, this does exist, and it’s real,” Frank said. “[But Vance's accusation] sounds like a conspiracy theory to me. I would love to see his evidence for that.”

Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz has branded his GOP rival as "weird," an image seems to have stuck with the public, and many critics have wondered why Republicans had chosen a nominee with so much baggage.

"Did they vet this dude at all?" said national security attorney Bradley Moss.

Watch below or click the link.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com