Donald Trump’s decision to pick JD Vance as his running mate was ‘the biggest mistake of his campaign’ and was not based on any clear criteria, according to a global digital campaign strategist.
Trump made a major error with his choice of Vance, an expert reveals (Image: Getty)
Donald Trump has made two major mistakes in the 2024 campaign – including his choice of JD Vance as running mate.
Sergio Jose Gutierrez, the CEO of Espora, whose firm has supported presidential runs for high-profile figures like Emmanuel Macron and Hillary Clinton, says that Vance doesn’t expand Trump’s voter base. It comes amid claims Trump has been left ‘exhausted’ and ‘not his usual self’ following the efforts of the campaign.
Gutierrez said: “There’s nothing that JD Vance does for Trump in the targets that are voting for Trump.”
Speaking at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, he told Mirror US: “Trump has committed two very strong mistakes and he doesn’t do mistakes. He’s a very disciplined entertainer.
“The first one is the more geographical balance. If you are from the north, you choose someone from the south; if you are from the west coast, you choose someone from the east coast, et cetera.
“The second formula [relies on balance]. If you are young, then you choose someone old, if you are white, you choose someone not white. If you are appealing to women, you choose someone appealing to men… it could be more complex than this because that’s the basic part of the formula.”
Addressing the third approach, Gutierrez mentioned: “And the third one was a trust balance, like Obama did with Biden. He was too young, too black, too minority, and too inexperienced.”
Gutierrez weighed in on the political strategy, saying: “So you need a very white guy, very old, very veteran, and very Republican, not in the phenotype but in the way of thinking. So this is a trust balance for the audience and the constituents.”
He added about Kamala Harris’s choice in Tim Walz: “Kamala chose a demographic and also not entirely a demographic balance but also a trust balance. But it was a balance. Trump didn’t do that.”
Detailing Trump’s decision-making process, Gutierrez disclosed: “There was no formula or criteria for choosing JD Vance. The decision took place was made minutes after the shooting. I mean, maybe, not right that minute, maybe in the coming days, but it was in the same bubble.”
Sergio Jose Gutierrez has worked on campaigns with Emmanuel Macron and Hillary Clinton (Image: )
Criticizing Trump’s approach towards Biden, Gutierrez remarked: “I don’t know if it was the Trump campaign or the Republican Party. The first mistake was they shouldn’t have attacked Biden at that time. Terrible timing.”
Adding to his critique of the timing, he mentioned, “It should have been now, I mean, one week from now after he got nominated, they should have escalated the narrative or the debate about how capable he was for office.”
Expanding on the failed strategy, Gutierrez concluded: “Not now, because the strategy was that we put this in the narrative in the public agenda of the past about fighting the incapability to rule a country. And then they let the Democrats take him down and that’s what happened.
“And in the case of the United States, what’s happening is that Kamala Harris is having momentum. What is electoral momentum is like when you serve a beer, the foam, that momentum, we have to wait for it to stabilize and to see what’s going on.”
“In the case of Kamala, we just saw one month ago or less. So she’s still having her momentum and in all the polls, she’s at most five points above Trump. So let’s say from one to five points. But when you focus to the toss-up states, you can see that the difference is one or two points in each one of them.”
Assessing the competitiveness of the race, Gutierrez stated: “So they’re tight. I believe that if we were two weeks ahead now, which she would be losing for two or three points. She’s really the underdog, as she said, two days ago. But Trump is not winning either.”
