Adam Serwer
Role at the time: Staff writer at The Atlantic, in an opinion essay
Response to this claim
The United States was becoming dirtier, poorer, less safe, and less prosperous.
“Who is responsible for this terrible state of affairs? The opposition party and immigrants, apparently. … But this account represents a preposterous inversion. Almost every problem Vance lists, the Trump administration has made worse.”
Essay by Atlantic staff writer Adam Serwer, published a week after Vance's convention speech. It quotes Vance's sentence about being called racist for noticing the country becoming "dirtier and poorer and less safe and less prosperous," then disputes Vance's account of who is responsible for the problems he lists.
Archived copy (opens in a new tab)Why we used this label
Relative to Vance's statement that supporters had been called racist for noticing the country becoming dirtier, Serwer rejects the account behind it, saying it blames the opposition party and immigrants and is "a preposterous inversion" of who made the problems worse. That is an express criticism of the statement's substance rather than a dispute over its label.