Vice President JD Vance’s appeal for “another chance” ahead of the November midterms got a blunt answer on Thursday, September 17, 2026, when radio host Charlamagne Tha God spent a stretch of “The Breakfast Club” taking it apart, then handed the vice president his “Donkey of the Day” title.
“What happened with the chance you already have?” asked Charlamagne, born Lenard McKelvey, on the Power 105.1 FM program.
The host walked through the arithmetic as he saw it: Vance is the sitting vice president and Republicans control Congress — which, in his view, means the chance is already in hand. A sitting vice president, he said, should not be reduced to asking for more time.
The remarks that set off the reaction came during Vance’s appearance on the “All-In” podcast, where he promoted tax cuts that appear to favor the wealthy along with Trump’s immigration agenda, under which multiple American citizens have been fatally shot in the street. Vance argued the administration had done “a lot of good” over the previous 18 months, then asked voters to stick with the party.
“There’s a lot of good that’s been done, but there’s a lot of work left to do. Don’t give power to the people who cause the problems that we’re fixing. Give us another chance, or give us another couple of years, to continue to work on the amazing things that we’ve been doing for the past two years,” Vance said.
Mockery Spreads Across Social Media
A clip of the appeal tore through social media on September 16, drawing a pile-on from officeholders, party accounts and online commentators who treated the phrasing as an admission rather than a sales pitch.
Sen. Brian Schatz wrote on X that he had never in his life heard a more baffling midterm pitch. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, in his own post, cast the appeal as Vance conceding Republican failure, told the vice president to get lost and predicted that MAGA extremism would be finished in November. Sen. Chuck Schumer ran through his own list of what another turn in power would buy: a $100 billion-plus foreign war, record diesel costs, gas above $4 a gallon and health coverage stripped from millions of Americans.
Polls Point to GOP Trouble
The vice president has reason for the hard sell. As of Wednesday, September 16, Democrats led Republicans by 7.5 percent in the generic ballot average compiled by Silver Bulletin. Trump’s approval stood at an average of 38 percent against 59 percent disapproval in averages compiled by The New York Times, and he has hit the worst approval rating of his presidency.
Trump has brushed off his sinking numbers and cast the midterms as a verdict on himself. The election is taking shape alongside a nationwide affordability crisis he has repeatedly dismissed as a Democrat “con job,” and his ongoing war on Iran, which has pushed food and gas prices higher.
Latino Voters Turn on Trump
CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten, citing Pew Research Center data and CNN-SSRS polling during a “News Central” appearance on Tuesday, September 15, said Trump’s gains with working-class Latinos have evaporated. Trump carried non-college Latino voters by 1 point over former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024, Enten noted, a breakthrough for a Republican presidential candidate.
In an average of CNN-SSRS polls across 2026, Trump was 42 points underwater in net approval with that same group — a swing Enten measured at 56 points. On immigration, the issue that powered the shift, Trump beat Harris among non-college Latinos by 9 points in 2024; in the 2026 polling his net approval on the issue with those voters sat at -47 points. Enten said the scale of the backlash should have Republicans badly worried heading into November, calling the figures historically good for Democrats.
Back on the radio, Charlamagne framed the coming election as a ledger rather than a popularity contest, saying there eventually has to be an accounting of what was promised, what was delivered, what got better and what got worse. He said he would happily vote Republican in November if the party were doing what it pledged, then listed the promises he said went unmet: lower prices, affordable housing, peace and an end to wars, and a better deal for working Americans.
He urged the administration to point to its accomplishments instead of asking for more time. “I don’t give a damn about you pleading for another chance,” he said.