Soaring popularity of Vance's 'Hillbilly Elegy' rebuts narrative that Trump VP pick is floundering

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Trump: People who like family will support JD Vance

Former President Trump joins ‘The Ingraham Angle’ to discuss his next outdoor rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, after the shooting and responds to criticisms over his vice presidential pick, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio.

Ohio Sen. JD Vance’s "Hillbilly Elegy" returned to the top spot as the No. 1 bestselling book in the U.S. this week — and sources close to the campaign told Fox News Digital it shows that voters are interested in getting to know former President Trump’s running mate.

Vance’s memoir, "Hillbilly Elegy," which was originally published in June 2016, reclaimed the top spot on major bestseller lists this week, including The New York Times, Publisher’s Weekly and USA Today. 

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A film adaption of the memoir, released in 2020, also has seen an uptick in viewership since Trump named Vance his running mate. The film has shot up to the No. 9 spot on Netflix’s list of top 10 movies. A source familiar told Fox News Digital that viewers have watched nearly six million hours of the film. 

Vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, hugs his wife Usha Chilukuri Vance during the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on July 17. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Vance’s commercial success comes as pundits and many on the left have criticized him in recent days about a 2021 comment he made about women without children. 

But a source close to the Trump campaign said the renewed success of "Hillbilly Elegy" just shows that "everyday Americans are rushing to get copies of his personal memoir to get to know the man based on his own words — without any media filter." 

"The mainstream media has been pulling their hair out, insisting JD Vance had a historically bad week on the campaign trail," said a source close to the Trump campaign. "In reality, millions of people who have completely lost faith in the media have rushed to buy copies of ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ or gathered with their family to watch the movie at home." 

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Former President Trump and Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, applaud during the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on July 16. (Reuters/Callaghan O'hare)

More recently, Vance has dealt with headaches as an interview from 2021 resurfaced, in which he said, "We are effectively run in this country, via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they wanna make the rest of the country miserable, too."

He then specifically called out Vice President Kamala Harris and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., as being part of this group in that interview.

This week, the Harris campaign and various other prominent Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, actress Jennifer Aniston and others, blasted Vance, accusing him of devaluing women that don’t have children or can’t have them under normal circumstances. 

Vance has said Democrats have taken his comments "out of context and blow it out of proportion, which is what they always do because they don’t have an agenda to run on themselves." 

Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, arrives on the first day of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on July 15. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

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A Vance spokesperson told Fox News Digital that "the leftwing media have twisted Senator Vance’s words and spun up a false narrative about his position on the issues." 

"As he clearly stated, he was talking about politicians on the left who support policies that are explicitly anti-child and anti-family," Vance spokesperson Taylor Van Kirk said. "The media can obsess over it all they want, but he’s not going to back down when it comes to advocating for policies that protect parental rights and encourage people to have more kids." 

Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita also defended Vance, saying the critics are being "absolutely absurd." 

"We’re about fighting for the working women of the United States, the forgotten people of the middle class. JD Vance is the perfect representation of that," LaCivita told Fox News' Brian Kilmeade. "They know it. It scares the hell out of them… They’re going to peddle in fiction and we’re going to have to deal with it as we go forward."