JD Vance claims Kamala Harris is running a ‘copycat campaign’ during stop in major swing state

Ohio Sen. JD Vance told battleground state voters that Vice President Kamala Harris is running a “copycat campaign” after her staffers revealed the Democratic presidential nominee was shifting her stance on several key policies, including an electric vehicle mandate.

Vance held a campaign event in Erie, Pennsylvania, Wednesday to deliver remarks on the American trucking industry, energy policy and the economy.

The Republican criticized electric vehicle mandates and claimed Harris wants to “to raise the price of diesel, raise the price of gasoline and have every trucker in this country drive an electric vehicle.” 

Harris led the Electric Vehicle Charging Action Plan in December 2021, an effort to ensure 50% of car sales were electric vehicles by 2030. Additionally, the Biden-Harris administration finalized one of its latest environmental regulations in 2024 to require half of all new car and truck sales to be electric.

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Ammar Moussa, the Harris campaign’s rapid response director, wrote in a “fact check email” Tuesday that the vice president “does not support an electric vehicle mandate” despite her past push for more EV sales.

“If you look at her campaign, the past week and half, she pretends that she agrees with Donald J. Trump on every issue. She is running a copycat campaign,” Vance told the attendees.

Staffers for Harris’ campaign announced over the past several weeks the vice president had changed her stance on several other key issues such as fracking, an automatic weapons buyback program, border wall construction and Medicare for all.

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“We have a vice president, Kamala Harris, who wants to be president, who thinks that our truckers, we ought to put them out of business, and that our truckers should all learn computer code,” Vance said in Pennsylvania. 

“If you force all these great truckers to buy electric trucks instead of the trucks they’re currently using, you’re going to make this inflation crisis way worse than it currently is.”

“She is running a copycat campaign,” JD Vance said of Kamala Harris. (Kenny Holston/Getty Images)

The senator added that a Trump-Vance administration would “stop ridiculous job-killing regulations like the EV mandate.”

“We do not have an economy unless American truckers are able to do what they do so well,” he said.

In response to accusations of copying Trump’s policies, a spokesperson for the Harris campaign highlighted several key policy areas where the two campaigns distinctly differ.

Former President Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, speaks at a campaign rally at the Desert Diamond Arena Aug. 23, 2024, in Glendale, Arizona. (Evan Vucci/AP Photo)

“Unlike Donald Trump and JD Vance, Vice President Harris supports abortion rights instead of ripping them away, cutting middle-class taxes instead of raising them by nearly $4,000 and bringing Americans together instead of dividing them,” the spokesperson said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “Most importantly, she opposes Donald Trump and JD Vance’s dangerous Project 2025 agenda.”

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Vance’s event in Pennsylvania marks the campaign’s latest battleground state stop, one day after he spoke to rural voters in Big Rapids, Mich.