- RAWSTORY.COM - Raw Story - 15/08/2024 17:52

J.D. Vance attack on ‘woke’ companies ‘sounds like a conspiracy theory’: report

Two months before he announced his run for the U.S. Senate, J.D. Vance delivered an anti-"woke" speech alleging companies that support a woman's right to choose just want "cheap labor," and claimed Amazon supported the Black Lives Matter movement because the protests were destroying the company's competition.Vance, who launched his successful Senate run in July of 2021 and is now Donald Trump's vice-presidential running mate, has been the subject of tremendous investigation by the media, which have found the "Hillbilly Elegy" author and billionaire-supported venture capitalist had a very full speaking schedule in the early 2000s."A couple of years ago Stacey Abrams said, about a Georgia abortion restriction, that this was a bad bill because it was bad for business," Vance told an audience at the ultra-conservative pro-MAGA Claremont Institute think tank. Abrams is the former Georgia Democratic House Minority Leader who became the voting rights advocate whose efforts helped President Joe Biden win the Peach State.READ MORE: ‘My Wife Had This Baby’: JD Vance Trounced for ‘Misogynistic’ Views on Women and Family"That was the argument of our new corporate, neoliberal class. And she was right. This is something that those of us on the right have to accept. When the big corporations come against you for passing abortion restrictions, when corporations are so desperate for cheap labor that they don’t want people to parent children, Stacey Abrams is right to say that abortion restrictions are bad for business."The Christian Science Monitor on Thursday, citing Vance's 2021 speech, reports Abrams says Vance had misrepresented her remarks."Ms. Abrams had lamented in a 2019 Twitter thread that more business leaders weren’t speaking up against a bill prohibiting most abortions in Georgia. She says in a statement to the Monitor that his comments misrepresented her earlier remarks, while saying he and Mr. Trump 'expressed contempt for women’s healthcare.'"“A woman’s access to abortion directly affects her ability to secure an education, find a job and advance and make decisions about how and when to grow a family,” Abrams told The Monitor via email. “Companies cannot effectively attract and retain talent when half of the available workforce is denied basic human rights to care and self-determination.”In his wide-ranging Claremont speech, which was titled, "Fighting Woke Capital," Vance continued, doubling-down on his opposition to abortion rights.Saying, "those of us who want to protect the dignity of the unborn ... should be for abortion restrictions, even if they are bad for business. We should support the dignity of human life, even if it means the corporate class doesn’t like it. That is a simple and unavoidable fact of the era that we find ourselves in."READ MORE: ‘Underestimating Harris’: Former Bush Strategist Warns Polls Off as Enthusiasm ‘Skyrockets’As for Vance's claim on Amazon's support for the Black Lives Matter movement, The Monitor spoke with a historian who says the far-right Republican's allegation is unsupported.Vance "accused Amazon of funding Black Lives Matter in order to burn down the competition," The Monitor reported.“Who benefits most when small businesses on Main Street are destroyed? 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,” Vance said. “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.”The Monitor reported that left-leaning historian and author Thomas Frank "says that Mr. Vance identified a phenomenon that has been going on for years – but took it to an extreme and unsupported conclusion."“'This combination of liberalism and capitalism, this does exist, and it’s real,' says Mr. Frank. But instead of just accusing companies of virtue signaling, Mr. Vance makes a giant leap in framing their rhetoric and actions as part of a sinister plot. Jeff Bezos wanting Main Street to burn? 'That sounds like a conspiracy theory to me. I would love to see his evidence for that.'"READ MORE: White Born Again Christian Evangelicals Could Sway Election to Harris Warns CBN’s Brody