| | | | |  | | By Ian Ward | |  Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance speaks at a rally at trucking company in Erie, Pennsylvania on August 24. | Jeff Swensen/Getty Images | FUGAZI POLITICS — Earlier this week, as Vice President Kamala Harris took to the campaign trail to roll out a new set of economic policy proposals, her Republican vice presidential opponent, Sen. JD Vance, took to the internet to criticize them. “As Kamala Harris talks a big game about standing up for workers, remember that her administration wanted to fire hundreds of thousands of people for refusing the COVID shot,” Vance posted on social media. “It’s all fake.” Vance’s take-down may sound fairly routine, but one word stands out: “Fake.” Like his running mate Donald Trump and Trump’s many surrogates, Vance has embraced that four-letter word as a catch-all political epithet, used to describe everything from the news media to unfavorable polls to Kamala Harris’ entire personality. But Vance’s use of the term to describe Harris’ economic proposals gets at something deeper than Trump’s verbal tic. To those in the know on the right, Vance’s repeated use of the word “fake” points toward a broader critique of America’s economic order. It’s one that has gained purchase among the small clique of conservative writers and activists surrounding Vance — a group often known as the “New Right.” And if Trump wins in November, the critique that underlies Vance’s use of the word could play a critical role in shaping the economic policy of a potential Trump-Vance administration. So, what does Vance really mean by “fake”? In the eyes of many on the New Right, the United States has not one but two economies — a “real economy” grounded in productive industries like manufacturing and transportation, and a “fake economy,” based on non-productive industries like finance and consulting, where productivity is measured in terms of intangible economic growth rather than the production of tangible goods and services. As Vance put it during a speech in Byron Center, Michigan in mid-August, “I like to talk about the ‘real’ versus the ‘fake’ economy. The ‘real’ economy is for the people who build things with their hands, who get it to our stores, who transport it from one place to another.” The “fake” economy, by contrast, is all the economic activity that shows up in GDP measurements but that doesn’t “put people to work making real products for American families” as Vance put it in his speech at the Republican National Convention. As Vance and his New Right allies see it, the “fake economy” has gradually swallowed up the “real economy” as the spread of globalization and the financialization of economic markets have shifted the focus of U.S. economic policy from producing goods and services to growing financial assets and ensuring returns on investments. This shift, in turn, has had profound consequences for the United States: In addition to blowing up the trade deficit and making the U.S. reliant on foreign imports for basic goods, the rise of the “fake economy” has concentrated economic power in the hands of asset-owning elites and harmed working-class communities — like the eastern Ohio steel town that Vance grew up in — that depend on the “real economy” for their economic livelihood. As Vance said while running for an Ohio Senate seat in 2022, “You’re going to have a fiscal problem in this country so long as we have a fake economy where we rely on countries that hate us to make our stuff.” To be sure, Vance’s casual reliance on calling things “fake” as a shorthand for this broader critique can result in some bizarre soundbites — like the time last year when Vance declared that “economics is fake” because his 40-year-old refrigerator kept lettuce fresher than a newer fridge that he had just purchased. But some iterations of Vance’s argument have even gained acceptance across the political spectrum. During last year’s legislative fight over U.S. aid for Ukraine, for instance, Vance repeatedly argued that the relative strength of the American economy — measured purely in terms of GDP — did not reflect its actual military strength in a match-up with Russia. That point garnered significant agreement at this year’s Munich Security Conference, where even supporters of U.S. aid to Ukraine acknowledged that U.S. economic power doesn’t mean it has the industrial capacity to support an extended war with Russia. In other settings, Vance has embraced the critique — shared by many mainstream economists — that economic indicators like GDP are not meaningful measures of a society’s economic health. “One of the [animating] forces in my politics is I have a deep skepticism of how we measure things and whether it’s actually captured reality,” Vance told POLITICO Magazine earlier this year. On the campaign trail, though, Vance has been vague about how he and Trump plan to restrain the growth of the “fake” economy and resuscitate the “real” one. So far, he has largely paid lip service to Trump’s economic agenda, which pairs sweeping immigration restrictions, aggressive tariffs and deregulation of American energy markets with broad-based tax-breaks that would benefit big businesses and high-earners. The closest that Vance has come to laying out a blueprint for the stimulating the “real economy” came during a talk he gave at the right-leaning economic think tank American Compass in 2023, where he talked in broad strokes about shifting economic policy to “make working on real things pay more money than it does right now … [and] make working on fake things pay less.” But until he lays out a more substantial plan for growing the “real” economy, Vance will have to contend with a familiar criticism: that his economic populism is as fake as the economy he decries. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at iward@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @ianwardreports.
| | — Hunter Biden offers plea in tax case, aiming to avoid trial: Hunter Biden submitted a plea to accept responsibility for tax evasion and other tax crimes today just moments before his trial on those charges was scheduled to begin. The plea offer is a major plot twist in a six-year investigation of the president’s son that exposed his lucrative business deals with foreign companies and his lengthy struggles with drug addiction. Biden’s attorneys told the judge that Biden would like to enter an unusual plea known as an Alford plea, in which a defendant maintains innocence but concedes that prosecutors have enough evidence to obtain a conviction. Courts treat Alford pleas the same as guilty pleas. — FBI raids homes of top aides to New York City Mayor Eric Adams: Federal authorities raided the homes of at least three of New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ most senior aides and closest friends, five people with knowledge of the situation told POLITICO. The search Wednesday morning of the Manhattan home shared by Sheena Wright, the city’s first deputy mayor, and her romantic partner, Schools Chancellor David Banks, as well as the Queens home of the deputy mayor for public safety, Philip Banks, marks yet another federal inquiry into the mayor’s orbit. — White House: Biden won’t pardon his son: President Joe Biden is sticking to his June pledge not to pardon his son, his press secretary said today, after Hunter Biden submitted a surprise plea that would accept responsibility for tax evasion and other tax crimes. “No,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said when asked aboard Air Force One if Biden would reconsider his vow. “It’s still no.” Jean-Pierre also said the president would not seek to commute his son’s sentence prior to leaving office in January.
| | | | BANKING ON BANKERS — Donald Trump laid out an economic vision of lower taxes, higher tariffs and light-touch regulation in an address to top executives on Wall Street today. In a speech before the Economic Club of New York, the former president doubled down on plans to slash rules on companies, cut taxes on those that keep production in the U.S., and impose punishing tariffs on any business that moves jobs or manufacturing overseas. He also pledged to tackle government inefficiency with a new Elon Musk-inspired commission and to launch a sovereign wealth fund with money collected from tariffs to pay for everything from infrastructure projects and child-care costs to paying down the national debt — moves that might ease concerns about the fiscal impact of his agenda. “I am promising low taxes, low regulations, low energy costs, low interest rates, secure borders, low low low crime and surging incomes for citizens of every race, religion, color and creed,” Trump said. “My plan will rapidly defeat inflation, quickly bring down prices and reignite explosive economic growth.” MEETING SCHEDULED — Vice President Kamala Harris will meet with Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien and the union’s membership as it ponders an endorsement in the presidential race, the union said today. The Teamsters booked Sept. 16 as the meeting date. But a Harris spokesperson did not respond to questions about when the discussion would take place. The planned huddle comes amid an unusual election year posture for the 1.3 million-member union, which included O’Brien speaking at the Republican National Convention. YOU CAN’T DO THAT — Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro broke the law by publicly endorsing the reelection of President Joe Biden and criticizing former President Donald Trump in several statements he made while on official duty overseas, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel said today. In a report to the White House, the watchdog agency said Del Toro’s comments about the presidential election came in a BBC interview in response to questions after a speech in London. While he later reported the remarks, his unwillingness to take responsibility for them is troubling, the special counsel said. The agency said Del Toro’s comments, which were made before Biden dropped out of the presidential race, violate the Hatch Act, which prohibits U.S. officials from engaging in political activity while they are on duty and from “using their official authority or influence to interfere with or affect the result of an election.”
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The Russian flag flies above the Russian Ambassador's residence a few blocks north of the White House. | Samuel Corum/Getty Images | MOVED IT ALL ONLINE — The United States and nine allied nations today formally accused the Russian government of masterminding cyberattacks in 2020 on Ukrainian critical infrastructure, among many other targets. The joint statement was put out the day after the Justice Department took separate steps to call out Russian malicious cyber activity, underlining the ongoing threat posed by Moscow’s hackers to U.S. and allied nation networks. The FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the National Security Agency — in conjunction with agencies from the Netherlands, Germany, Estonia, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom, Latvia, Australia, Canada and Ukraine — put out a joint alert on the cyberattacks. The countries pinned the attacks, which largely used a type of malware known as “WhisperGate,” on GRU Unit 29155, a Russian military hacking group. Hacking efforts as part of this campaign began in 2020, and included attacks on Ukrainian groups in January 2022 ahead of Russia’s invasion, along with critical infrastructure organizations in government, transportation, financial, health and other sectors in NATO member states. The attack on Ukraine in 2022, which involved wiping out government and private sector systems, was previously blamed on Russia by the U.S. and the European Union. According to the FBI, this hacking activity included more than 14,000 observed instances of scanning networks in more than 20 NATO member states and European nations, along with targeting of groups in Central American and Asian nations. The attacks often involved the defacement of websites or the exfiltration and posting of stolen data online.
| | | | | $20 billion The price that Verizon is paying to buy Frontier Communications, in a play to strengthen their fiber network. Verizon Communications Inc. said today that the acquisition will also shore up its foray into artificial intelligence as well as connected smart devices. | | | | | SELF HELP FROM A HABSBURG — The Habsburg dynasty, one of the most prominent in European history, hasn’t held true political power for hundreds of years. But the family continues to exist, and now one Habsburg descendant is attempting to find some cultural purchase in the modern world — by writing a self-help book. Titled “The Habsburg Way: Seven Rules for Turbulent Times,” the 57-year-old Eduard Habsburg is a Hungarian diplomat who’s also a James Bond and Star Wars superfan. For The Dial, Natasha Wheatley spoke with Eduard and did a close read of his book.
| | |  On this date in 1975: U.S. Secret Service agents put handcuffs on Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, a member of the Manson family, after she pointed a gun at President Gerald Ford as he walked from his hotel to the State Capitol building in Sacramento, Calif. Fromme was sentenced to life in prison for the assassination attempt; she was released on parole in 2009. | AP | | Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here. | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
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