At first it seems like a filibuster. Of course J.D. Vance knows the price of a gallon of milk, he insists.
‘I do. I think. Right now?’ he says, sitting beside wife Usha on his campaign jet, nicknamed Trump Force Two.
‘I know the answer to this question very well. Are we talking about organic? Are we talking about the DC area… the Ohio area? Because at Kroger, the price of a gallon of milk, my guess is about $3.60 a gallon. Check, check if that’s right.’
A swift fact check ensues as staffers fiddle with phones, looking up the price at the Vance’s’ nearest store.
The answer comes back: $3.29, which is not bad for a former venture capitalist-turned-senator who now has to live inside a Secret Service bubble as running mate to Donald Trump.
Sen. J.D. Vance and his wife Usha board their 737 campaign plane for a trip that will take them to four rallies via seven states on the final slog before Election Day
It is not the question Vance expected as he spent the final day of the campaign criss-crossing battleground states to seal the deal with American voters.
He will check off Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, and Pennsylvania before the day is out.
But there is time for a beer run along the way and an hour here or there relaxing with Usha beside him in the front of the plane.
Except when the man from DailyMail.com is asking about groceries.
His answer punctures one nagging doubt about Trump and Vance and their claim to understand working families struggling with rising bills. Do either of them ever do any grocery shopping?
‘I still buy approximately 50 percent of our groceries,’ says Vance, before explaining that now it tends to be online orders because of Secret Service restrictions.
‘Is that true?’ I ask Usha who has already become accustomed to life as a real-time fact checker, answering questions in the past about whether her husband wears mascara or eyeliner (he does not).
‘It used to be more,’ she answers, before explaining that the whole family—two young sons and a daughter—would head to Krogers before school twice a week to stock up on food and essentials.
Depending on what happens on Tuesday, the security bubble may be about to get a whole lot more restrictive.
Where some politicians may aspire to the private plane and the chauffeured SUV, Vance chafes.
‘I aspire to get my f***ing minivan back,’ he says with a grin, ‘but that’s not gonna happen.’
DailyMail.com was with Vance and his team every step of the way on their final frantic day of the campaign, as they five flights, across seven states, and held four rallies.
8:12am: A disheveled Vance boards plane
Vance clutches iced coffee and he arrived in jeans, a sweatshirt and a flannel jacket
Vance has been traveling on a chartered 737-800, seen here during an earlier trip
Vance’s motorcade pulls up to Trump Force One at the Cincinnati Municipal Airport. The senator looks like we all feel: he’s wearing jeans and sweatshirt, his beard looks unkempt and he doesn’t crack a smile.
He clutches an iced coffee like his life depends on it.
We’re all ready for this be over. And we all know that it will be a long day, returning home close to midnight.
In contrast, his wife Usha emerges from their armored SUV looking a picture of good cheer. Her husband only cracks a smile when she points out how his traveling press corps has grown in size for the final day.
He waves from the top of the steps while an aide carries two boxes of donuts to the press cabin at the back of the plane.
Twenty minutes later and his chartered 737 has taken off en route to Wisconsin and the first of four campaign rallies in battleground states.
8:38am: The Final Countdown
Weary travelers are jolted awake when Europe’s ‘The Final Countdown’ blares out over the plane’s sound system.
It’s like the last day of school. Staffers are ready for a break. And chuckle at the choice of music
‘Will things ever be the same again?’
10:35am: La Crosse, Wisconsin
The first rally of the day. The Vances come on stage together before Usha ducks out of the way
Vance has changed into suit and tie by the time he disembarks in Wisconsin. About 500 people are waiting for him in a non-descript conference center room, festooned with the usual Stars and Stripes paraphernalia.
‘Will you please welcome the next vice president of the United States and Usha Vance,’ says the host.
They walk on stage together. Usha beams and waves to the crowd but quickly exits stage right, to take up a seat out of spotlight away from the stage.
Her husband gets quickly to the nub of his argument – that Kamala Harris can’t represent a new way of doing things when she is the sitting vice president.
‘Kamala Harris more of the same high grocery prices. She is more of the same chaos around the world and more the same wide open borders. So…’
In what becomes a pattern for the day, the traveling press pack is told to be ready to head for the motorcade when Vance starts his anecdote about ‘steak night.’
11:16am: The world’s biggest six pack
The motorcade makes an unexpected stop in the middle of La Crosse, beside what look like six gigantic chemical tanks, but which is actually the world’s biggest six pack.
The would-be vice president is making a beer run at the City Brewery, which can brew 1,100 barrels of beer a day.
The Vance campaign’s purchase looks meager in comparison to that capacity. An aide is spotted carrying Vance’s six pack to a van, after the senator showcases it in a video for X.
12:20pm: ‘I’m hoping for Johnny Walker Blue’
The Vances board the plane after the first campaign stop in La Crosse, Wisconsin
Vance is sitting with his wife Usha and aides at the front of the plane when DailyMail.com is invited forward to talk with the man who could be the next vice president of the United States.
He is taking nothing for granted as he reflects on the ups and downs of the campaign.
‘All I care about at the end of the day is winning,’ he says, before explaining that one of his best friend just messaged him with a text that captured his mood.
‘He said, look, I think things are gonna go to well, and this is what I have for you, and it’s Johnnie Walker Blue and he said, and if things don’t go well, I’ve got this, and it’s Beam’s Eight Star.
‘So I’m hoping it’s Johnnie Walker Blue.’
Johnnie Walker Blue Label is a high-end whiskey, retailing for $200 and up. Beam’s Eight Star is not.
His role in the campaign was simple, he adds, as he thinks about all the stops for ice cream, the rallies and the TV appearances since he was named Trump’s running mate.
‘Fundamentally, my job has been to define Kamala Harris, to try to identify the ways in which her policies have been bad for people, and to hammer that message as much as possible to as many people who will listen,’ he says.
‘And that’s why we do so many media interviews, and that’s why we do so many events, and that’s why we do so many press conferences.’
He chafes at the security bubble that means he finds it harder and harder to meet people beyond a choreographed campaign stop.
1:11pm The stump speech gets an update
In Flint, Michigan, Vance appeared at the FIM Capitol Theater in front of hundreds of people
He updated his stump speech to include the story of an Orthodox Jewish man shot dead in Chicago by an illegal immigrant in an apparently anti-Semitic attack
The second rally of the day and this time it is at the Capitol Theater in Flint, Michigan. It is the sort of deep-carpeted, slightly scruffy place that Vance knows well from the Midwest.
He sticks close to his stump speech, repeating lines that landed well in Wisconsin, such as promising to return when he is vice president.
But he has added in details of anti-Semitic shooting in Chicago, where an Orthodox Jewish man was shot dead by an illegal immigrant.
In our chat he used it as an example of the media missing the point, of focusing on his past remarks about ‘childless cat ladies’ or Trump’s comments about Liz Cheney facing rifle barrels when real people, outside the elite bubble, have other worries.
‘Why is the media not talking more about the fact that this person is in our country because [Kamala Harris] didn’t do her job?’ he told me on the plane. ‘That that lack of curiosity and focus from the media has really shocked me.’
After about 30 minutes on stage he has begun to talk about the woman who could no longer afford ‘family steak night.’
That is the cue for the media to head for the motorcade.
2:50pm: Pizza time
Campaign life is not easy on the waistline. Late-night burgers or pizza after events is par for the course.
Earlier in the campaign Vance revealed to DailyMail.com how he had adopted a fitness regimen when running for Senate in 2022 because he realized it was not the healthiest of lifestyles.
The result was dropping 20lb.
On Trump Force Two, Monday meant elevenses of McDonald’s burgers followed by plates of pizza in the early afternoon, at least in the press cabin at the back.
The plane is decorated on the inside with campaign slogans. ‘Trump secured the largest pay raise for our troops in a decade,’ reads one.
4: 51pm: On the stump with Matt Gaetz
Another rally, another smooch with Usha before she ducks out of the limelight
Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida was one of the warm- up speakers before Vance appeared
We are ahead of schedule and the warm-up acts, including Rep. Matt Gaetz and Georgia’s lieutenant governor, cut their speeches short.
Vance takes the stage to what is now a familiar sound and the banjos of Merle Haggard’s ‘America First,’ echoing around a hangar-like space in the bowels of Atlanta’s Cobb Galleria Center.
On the final day of campaigning there is no time for his signature move, inviting questions from journalists and turning every event into a press conference.
More to the point, election eve is not the time for an unexpected question and a gaffe that could overshadow Election Day.
Just ask Democrats who have banished Joe Biden from the election trail.
‘Fundamentally, my job has been to define Kamala Harris, to try to identify the ways in which her policies have been bad for people, and to hammer that message as much as possible to as many people who will listen,’ he told me earlier.
‘And that’s why we do so many media interviews, and that’s why we do so many events, and that’s why we do so many press conferences.’
He is getting to the anecdote about the woman who had to cancel family steak night, so the press is ushered quickly out to the motorcade.
He is on a tight schedule. On the final day of campaigning there is no time for his signature move, inviting questions from journalists and turning every event into a press conference.
Vance was hitting some of the same states as Donald Trump, as they leave nothing to chance
More to the point, election eve is not the time to be taking questions: There is little chance of delivering an answer so good that it knocks out the opposition; but it is possible to upstage your boss and create a firestorm that distracts from the closing message..
Just ask Democrats why Joe Biden has been disappeared from the campaign.
‘Fundamentally, my job has been to define Kamala Harris, to try to identify the ways in which her policies have been bad for people, and to hammer that message as much as possible to as many people who will listen,’ he told me earlier.
‘And that’s why we do so many media interviews, and that’s why we do so many events, and that’s why we do so many press conferences.’
His Georgia rally did not so much deliver a gaffe as an explosive moment, seized on by critics who accused him of dangerous rhetoric when he riffed on the idea that Biden had called Trump supporters ‘garbage.’
‘We are going to take out the trash in Washington D.C.’ he continues, ‘and the trash’s name is Kamala Harris.’
At other rallies he just refers to taking out the trash in Washington, leaving viewers to join the work.
In any event before long he is getting to the anecdote about the woman who had to cancel family steak night, so the press is ushered quickly out to the motorcade.
7:59pm: Vance makes it seven states in a day
The final event is in front of the rowdiest crowd of the day in Newtown, Pennsylvania
There is no fanfare, no glitterballs exploding. With the night already dark, the motorcade passes from New Jersey (where Trump Force Two landed at Trenton) into Pennsylvania, marking the seventh state of the day.
After starting in Ohio, we have traveled through Wisconsin, Minnesota (briefly), Michigan, Georgia, New Jersey finally Pennsylvania.
The rally is in Newtown, in a vast barn with an Astroturf floor.
The crowd, which Vance says is 2500, is the liveliest of the day.
And they cheer along at the right moments and join him when he describes Harris’ fumbling answer when asked what she would have done differently to Biden.
‘Not a thing that comes to mind,’ they shout happily.
‘Where’s the open bar,’ says Vance. ‘This is a hell of a crowd.’
10:45pm: What’s next?
The next 24 hours will determine whether or not Vance will ever get his minivan back.
Vance said he has not talked to Trump about what his portfolio might be in a Trump-Vance administration, even though there was an obvious role.
‘We need Donald Trump in two places at once. That obviously is impossible, but we can have Donald Trump in one place and JD Vance in another,’ he told DailyMail.com.
‘But I haven’t talked to the President any great detail about it, because we’re both very superstitious, and we don’t like to talk about the transition.’
On Tuesday, he will vote in Cincinnati and then fly to join Trump in Palm Beach.
We leave Pennsylvania 45 minutes ahead of schedule and arrive early back at Cincinnati.
His staff assembles at the bottom of the steps as he and Usha disembark from Air Force One. The campaign is over and everyone is lightheaded, chanting, ‘J.D., J.D., J.D.’
His response comes in typical Vance style. He roasts them with a smile and the sort of language that his famous Mamaw (who raised him and ‘who could make a sailor blush’ with her cursing) would have enjoyed.
