We had a feeling it was going to be J.D.
Considering the other contestants in Trump’s veepstakes – North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (barely a consideration from the start) and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott (all that embarrassing sucking up for nothing), the junior senator from Ohio was really the only logical choice.
Vance has been leading the pack of Trump brownnosers during his myriad criminal trials, condemning each meticulously prosecuted case against the former president as if it were a mortal sin against the Lord Almighty.
He’s had his nose so far up Trump’s ass he can smell that elaborate concoction of lacquer and rosin he uses to hold his wispy pompadour in place.
As reward for his gross obsequiousness, Vance gets to fill the role his predecessor, Mike Pence, held when Trump sent an infuriated and woefully misguided mob to the U.S. Capitol to hang him.
So why would J.D. degrade and endanger himself so? Considering all that Vance has said about Trump in the past, his ascension to the VP slot is as ludicrous as any other aspect of Trump’s political career.
I mean, for Chrissakes, Vance once compared Trump to Hitler.
“I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn't be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he's America's Hitler,” wrote Vance to an associate in 2016.
However, six years later, while running for the Senate, Vance had changed his tune, erased his social media critiques of Trump, planted his nose firmly in Trump’s pockmarked posterior, and began breathly in noxious, mind-altering MAGA fumes.
After months of deep-bowel whiffs that would have killed anyone with even a modicum of pride, Vance has reached the rarefied state of humiliation only attained by the most dehumanized and emasculated, your Ted Cruz, Tim Scott, and Lindsey Graham types (South Carolinians are doubly disgraced these days).
So why should we care if Vance is willing to prostrate himself in such a humiliating fashion to become Trump’s VP pick?
Because, so far, he’s really goddamn good at it.
Reinventing yourself from a Trump critic into a Trump toadie while facing the blistering scrutiny of the news media, and coming out a winner, has never been done.
Think about it: Who’s bowed down to Trump and emerged the better? A bankrupt and deflated Rudy Giuliani? The aforementioned senate duo from South Carolina? Ted Cruz? Marco Rubio?
Do any of these folks seem like their star has risen since they’ve willingly tossed themselves into Trump’s black hole of narcissism and anti-democratic revenge fantasies?
I’m guessing the 39-year-old Vance has enough hubris to assume he will avoid the perils that led to Pence’s near demise on Jan. 6, relying on his celebrity as a converted Never Trumper, who earlier in his public life was lauded by The New York Times for his southern Ohio-based memoir “Hillbilly Elegy.”
Trump’s vice president is the same guy The Times wrote this about in 2016 when reviewing his book:
“Now, along comes Mr. Vance, offering a compassionate, discerning sociological analysis of the white underclass that has helped drive the politics of rebellion, particularly the ascent of Donald J. Trump. Combining thoughtful inquiry with firsthand experience, Mr. Vance has inadvertently provided a civilized reference guide for an uncivilized election, and he’s done so in a vocabulary intelligible to both Democrats and Republicans.
Vance went from a Times darling, who they anointed America’s whisperer to the Rust Belt and Appalachia, to perhaps one day being one KFC-strained heartbeat away from the Oval Office.
He did all this under the intense scrutiny of every Never Trumper in America while also winning over the hearts and Newsmax mushed-up minds of MAGA faithful.
And when a gunman came within an eyelash of ending Trump’s life, Vance came out with this horrendous statement blaming the attack on Biden.
“The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” Vance tweeted following the shooting. “That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”
Anyone capable of pulling off that Ulysses-like feat of navigation among the perils of Trump World, the news media, and the voting public is a force with which to be reckoned.
Were Trump to win reelection, Vance would, in effect be the de facto heir to the MAGAverse, with the youth and roots to make him a swing-state darling for two terms.
And without all the bravado, overt racism, and sex scandal baggage, Vance could more easily implement the MAGA agenda, which includes a federal abortion ban and other extremist legislation targeting women and minorities.
In essence, Vance represents a more dangerous version of Trumpism, one even more Americans would tolerate and embrace.
