The selection of J.D. Vance as running mate was a big mistake, according to Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago mob and media friends.
Vance, a young Trump, won’t attract new voters to the GOP. Their endorsement is MAGA squared. He likely lost a lot of votes by slandering pop icons Taylor Swift and Jennifer Aniston, among millions of other “conservatives.” He spends much of his time on the defensive about past comments, while stirring up new controversies on right-wing podcasts, talk radio shows, and conservative conferences. Instead of cleaning up after his own mistakes, he’s even more adamant about his apologizing (like Trump). And when pressed multiple times about Vance’s comments, Trump dismissively states he hasn’t spoken to his running mate. Ouch.
But Vance is not only a rotten second-tier idiot, he’s also a total failure at his job as a senator from Ohio.
Many public officials pride themselves on serving their constituents well, especially in difficult times. Oddly enough, Vance has suddenly become their overwhelming favorite. DisService that puts your life at risk.
Trump’s recent trouble with tens of thousands of voters in Springfield, Ohio (to rile up immigration concerns) is tantamount to political malice. Trump is happy to speak out about almost anything, but this time it’s true.
For weeks, Vance has portrayed Springfield as typical of a (white) American community overrun with people of color from other countries — in this case, Haitians fleeing the grinding poverty and violence of their home country to settle legally in Ohio, where they’re welcomed by employers desperate for hard-working workers. Vance, who once wrote movingly about “American” families like his own who came to Ohio from Kentucky seeking opportunity but enduring hostility, is now on the receiving end of hostility in his overzealous pursuit of political advancement.
And when Trump picked up on Vance’s lie about Haitian immigrants stealing and eating Springfield residents’ cats and dogs, broadcasting the conspiracy theory to viewers of his debate with Kamala Harris last Tuesday, hell began for Vance’s supporters.
Though local officials declared the reports to be social media-generated nonsense, more than 30 bomb threats led to the temporary closure of City Hall, two elementary schools, two hospitals and two universities. The threats, which continued this week, ultimately turned out to be fake. But the fear and chaos in Springfield was real. By Tuesday, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine had sent state police to Springfield schools and urged frightened parents to send their kids to school, while warning that hate groups were descending on the city. “It’s sad that it has come to this,” one mother told a local paper.
That’s true. But the senator wasn’t sad, she was just angry because she was getting bad press. Consider Senator Vance’s harsh, self-serving remarks on Tuesday: “I’m still waiting for a correction and apology from left-wing journalists. They lied about bomb threats to silence us. Why? Because they don’t want to talk about Kamala Harris’ border policies that will make housing unaffordable for the American people.”
An apology? The reporter didn’t lie. There was a bomb threat. It’s not the journalist who is trying to silence Vance’s fear-mongering, it’s Springfield’s police chief, school superintendent, Republican mayor and governor. Springfield Mayor Rob Lew has repeatedly called on Vance and Trump to stop: “The federal politicians who have hurt our city need to know they are hurting our city, and it’s because of their words.”
And it’s not just “left-wing journalists” who are validating Vance’s lies. This week, conservative commentator Kevin D. Williamson wrote a piece for the Dispatch subtitled “A Long, Long Story of What Didn’t Happen”: “You can send little JD to Yale and make him sophisticated, you can send him to Silicon Valley and make him rich, you can send him to the Senate and make him powerful, but you can’t stop him from becoming what he clearly wants to be: Cleetus the toothless Twitter troll.”
Speaking of apologies, Vance has yet to apologize to Nathan Clark, the father of an 11-year-old boy who died in a bus crash last year. Clark called on Vance to apologize for using his son’s death as a murder case by Haitian immigrants.
Meanwhile, Governor DeWine has been on television to test Governor Vance’s lies. Far from eating pets, he said on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday that Haitians are valuable employees for Springfield businesses and boost the local economy. “When you add 15,000 people to a population of 58,000, that brings some challenges – housing, health care, language, cultural differences,” he acknowledged. “And we’re addressing those.”
“If I have to create a story in the American media to actually focus on the suffering of the American people, then I’m going to do that,” he defiantly told CNN on Sunday.
The golden rule for a vice presidential candidate is to do no harm, and Vance has done plenty of harm, which is why he’s a terrible candidate and even worse as a senator.
