Maybe special counsel Robert Mueller has dirt on President Trump and maybe he doesn’t. But at this point in the now 19-month-long investigation, conservative strategist Grover Norquist is arguing that vapers, rather than indictments, might bring down Trump. Specifically, vapers angry at FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb.
“I’m not worried that Mueller is gonna stop the president from getting re-elected. I think Gottlieb might,” Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, told a recent meeting of the Washington Examiner editorial board.
Norquist, the anti-tax activist well-known for his group’s Taxpayer Protection Pledge, says vapers helped put Trump in office — and if Trump doesn’t turn Gottlieb’s FDA around, they might help boot him from office.
Since Gottlieb took office in May 2017 (right around the time Mueller was appointed, coincidentally), his FDA has a mixed record on vaping. Gottlieb was slow to delay or nix altogether an Obama-era rule which would have taken 99 percent of vaping products off the market when implemented. While it was eventually delayed until 2022, Gottlieb followed up with plans to ban the sale of most flavored e-cigarettes in gas stations and convenience stores, in an attempt to push back on a dubious “epidemic” of teen vaping.
“There are 10 million vapers in the country,” Norquist said, immediately followed by: “We have a Republican Senate because of [Ron] Johnson, the Republican senator [from Wisconsin].”
Norquist described Johnson as having slim chances of re-election in 2016 — “the guy in the toughest state who was never coming back.” Indeed, FiveThirtyEight’s Senate forecast gave Johnson an 18 percent chance of winning. More than a month before Election Day, the RealClearPolitics polling average had Johnson down by more than 9 percentage points — Johnson won by 3.4 points.
“He organized every vape shop in the state. And [on election night], he announced the vaping vote put him over the top, and he’s probably right,” Norquist said.
Trump’s surprise Wisconsin win came by just 22,748 votes, a 0.77-point advantage over Hillary Clinton. Along with Michigan and Pennsylvania, it was one of three states that voted for Barack Obama and then gave Trump a win by less than 1 point.
If enough of the 10 million vapers flip their votes because of Gottlieb’s antics, or just stay home altogether, it could be enough to give Trump’s Democratic opponent a victory in 2020.
“I was very disappointed,” Norquist said of the FDA’s vaping rules under Gottlieb. “I think it’s a huge mistake. People will die as a result. This is not nothing. When you raise taxes and regulations on a much healthier product, harm reduction is very helpful and very important and the right thing to do.”
The U.K. Royal College of Physicians found that e-cigarettes are at least 95 percent safer than traditional cigarettes. A report from U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine says, “there is conclusive evidence that completely substituting e-cigarettes for combustible tobacco cigarettes reduces users’ exposure to numerous toxicants and carcinogens present in combustible tobacco cigarettes.”
With that health information in mind, it’s easily understandable why vapers, especially ex-smokers, want to protect the practice. “Vapers, unlike smokers, feel very virtuous about their decision” to vape, Norquist said.
“They draw blood. They care. They vote.”
