Are Trump And J.D. Vance Similar To George Wallace?

By Rosaland Tyler
Associate Editor
New Journal and Guide

Alabama Gov. George Wallace’s famous 1963 inauguration speech in Montgomery sounds eerily similar to some of former President Donald Trump’s recent campaign speeches, as well as comments that Trump’s vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance penned in “Hillbilly Elegy.”

Wallace, who was famously known for saying “Segregation now, segregation forever,” served four terms as Alabama governor, from the 1960s through the 1980s.  During his 1963 inaugural speech, Wallace continued to push for segregation, although federal lawmakers would approve the 1965 Civil Rights Act two years later.

“We invite the negro citizens of Alabama to work with us from his separate racial station … as we will work with him,” Wallace said in his 1963 speech. “We want jobs and a good future for BOTH races,” he told the crowd, but added, “Southerners played a most magnificent part in erecting this great divinely inspired system of freedom … and as God is our witness, Southerners will save it.”

Wallace also told his inaugural crowd more than six decades ago, “Let us, as Alabamians, grasp the hand of destiny and walk out of the shadow of fear … and fill our divine destination. Let us not simply defend … but let us assume the leadership of the fight and carry our leadership across this nation. God has placed us here in this crisis … let us not fail in this … our most historical moment.”

Although a new CBS poll shows presumptive Democratic Presidential Nominee Kamala Harris, is leading Trump by 1 point nationally, and also leading Trump 50 to 49 percent nationally in a head-to-head race, it is important to remember that Wallace’s 1963 inaugural speech was delivered when Black folks couldn’t legally try on shoes and dresses in downtown stores, order hamburgers and fries at a lunch counter, or sit in the front of a public bus, due to Jim Crow laws.

It may explain why Black voters, (74 percent) recently told CBS pollsters that they would “definitely” vote compared to 58 percent when Biden was the nominee.

Harris now has 81 percent support among Black voters, compared to 73 percent support for Biden.

In battleground states, Harris and Trump are tied in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Arizona, according to the new CBS poll. Trump has a 1-point lead in Wisconsin and a 3-point lead in Georgia and North Carolina, while Harris has a 2-point lead in Nevada.

The problem is Vance, who was born in 1984, was not even born when Wallace delivered his famous 1963 inaugural speech in Montgomery. Still, their logic sounds remarkably similar.

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“It’s not your fault that you’re a loser; it’s the government’s fault,” J.D. Vance wrote in “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.”

Vance also wrote in his 2016 best-seller, “Whenever people ask me what I’d most like to change about the white working class, I say, ‘The feeling that our choices don’t matter.’”

Vance added, “There is a cultural movement in the white working class to blame problems on society or the government, and that movement gains adherents by the day.”

Surely you see a pattern, as you compare Wallace’s and Vance’s thoughts.  If not, listen to a recent speech Trump delivered in Georgia.

Trump called Harris a “really low-IQ individual,” in his 90-minute speech, at an Aug. 3, rally held at the Georgia State Convocation Center, held just days after Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign event in the same venue.

Trump not only blamed Harris for the death of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley, who was killed by an undocumented immigrant from Venezuela,  (Jose Antonio Ibarra),  Trump also said, “Kamala Harris should not be asking for your vote, she should be begging Laken Riley’s family for forgiveness,” he added.

“I’m the one who’s saving democracy,” Trump said at his recent rally in Georgia.

“They don’t want the vote to be honest. In my opinion, they want us to lose,” Trump said, depicting himself as a victim, like Wallace, whose public service began in 1946 as assistant state’s attorney. Wallace was later elected to two terms in the state legislature. He was elected a judge of the Third Judicial Circuit of Alabama in 1953, and in 1958 he ran unsuccessfully for the governorship but lost although he had been endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan, according to Brittanica.

“Wallace won the governorship of Alabama in 1962 on a platform emphasizing segregation and economic issues. Within his first year in office he kept his pledge ‘to stand in the schoolhouse door’ by blocking the enrollment of Black students at the University of Alabama in June 1963.”

“And we can’t let that happen,” Trump added at his recent rally in Georgia. “If we lose Georgia, we lose the whole thing, and our country goes to hell.”

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The point is Wallace, the son of a farmer, also depicted himself as a type of saviour when he led the South’s fight against federally ordered racial integration in the 1960s. But Wallace was actually a populist, who won office by seizing on issues that appealed to many Southern whites, according to numerous historians.

Wallace’s mother, Mozelle Smith Wallace, was abandoned by her mother and raised in an orphanage in Mobile as a young girl. As a teen, Wallace won two Golden Gloves state titles. He enrolled in the military, served as a legislative page at the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery and graduated from the University of Alabama School of Law in 1942. So did his humble beginnings influence his largely divisive political platform?

The point is Wallace’s largely divisive views mirror Trump’s because there is still a market for grievance-focused political leaders. For example, Trump seemed like he was channeling Wallace, when he said at his recent Georgia rally, “We have to work hard to define her (Kamala Harris)…“I just want to say who she is. She’s a horror show,” he added. “She’ll destroy our country.”

But many political leaders are rejecting divisive political platforms including Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan (R), who recently described the former president’s Georgia speech as “unhinged” and “angry.”

“If you were able to see through Donald Trump’s incoherence and vindictiveness tonight, you saw a Donald Trump who does not care about uniting this country or speaking to the voters who will decide this election,” Duncan said in a recent statement on behalf of the Harris campaign. “Millions of Americans are fed up with his grievance-filled campaign focused only on himself. Tonight we heard a particularly unhinged, angry version of the same Donald Trump that Georgia rejected in 2020.”

Meanwhile more than two dozen Republicans recently launched  “Republicans for Harris,” a group that aims to woo GOP voters who reject Donald Trump.

To spot other similarities between Wallace and Trump, you will have to wait until the November elections. In the end, Wallace won only 46 electoral votes when he ran for president in 1968, according to The National Archives. Wallace, who ran for president in 1968, 1972 and 1976, died at age 79 in 1998.