JD Vance's one job is to clean up after Donald Trump -- but he keeps making a bigger mess

[marmar]

JD Vance's one job is to clean up after Donald Trump — but he keeps making a bigger mess
So much for "sanewashing" Donald Trump

By Amanda Marcotte
Senior Writer
Published September 17, 2024 6:00AM (EDT)


(Salon) In case it hasn't been mentioned in the past 15 seconds, a reminder: Sen. JD Vance went to Yale Law School. The Ohio Republican was selected as Donald Trump's running mate in no small part because of his overrated intellectual chops. In the 207-word announcement adding Vance to the ticket, Trump used the word "Yale" four times and even made sure to note that Vance graduated "Summa Cum Laude" from Ohio State University. Vance fashions himself a public intellectual, spending endless hours giving chin-scratching interviews on right-wing podcasts and to Ross Douthat of the New York Times. He name-drops far-right and even Nazi academics like Carl Schmitt and flings around plenty of five-dollar words. As Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei bluntly stated at Axios, "Vance can put an intellectual wrapper around Trump's red meat."

Watching interviews with Vance suggests his main job is to "translate" Trump's babble into coherent-sounding talking points. Vance lies just as much as Trump, but with a syntax that resembles normal human speech. On NBC News Sunday, Vance was asked about Trump's bizarre assertion he had "concepts of a plan" when he was asked during Tuesday's debate about healthcare. Vance claimed Trump didn't end the Affordable Care Act because his philosophy is "to fix problems even if he disagreed with the original legislation." This is false. Trump tried to kill the ACA in 2017 and failed only because a few Republican senators voted to keep it. Still, by using normal spoken English, Vance was able to set off fewer alarm bells.

....(snip)....

But despite Vance's mastery of noun-verb agreement, he's not doing great at making Trump seem less weird. That's because Vance is quite weird himself, especially about cats, a previously unremarkable popular species of pet. First, there were all the clips of him ranting about "childless cat ladies," which Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., memorably called the "incel platform." Now he's pivoted to lying, repeatedly, about Haitian immigrants in his state of Ohio, falsely accusing them of eating cats. Vance even admitted it's a lie on national television, telling CNN's Dana Bash, "If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do."

Link to tweet

....(snip)....

Despite failing repeatedly, Vance still acts as if he's a master at turning Trump's bizarre behavior into something that passes for normal. Trump has been traveling with Laura Loomer, a white nationalist "influencer" who specializes in bottom-feeder vitriol. Loomer posted on Twitter that "the White House will smell like curry & White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center," if Harris, who is Indian-American, wins. When asked about it, Vance pretended to believe Loomer was merely expressing personal food preferences, saying, "I don’t think that it’s insulting for anybody to talk about their dietary preferences." When NBC's Kristen Welker reminded Vance that his wife, Usha, is also Indian-American, he kept up the ruse by saying, "whether you’re eating curry at your dinner table or fried chicken, things have gotten more expensive." He seems to think this sounds clever, but he just sounds dim. Even the dumbest person gets that Loomer's point is people of Asian heritage are not "real" Americans. .................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2024/09/17/jd-vances-one-job-is-to-clean-up-after-donald--but-he-keeps-making-a-bigger-mess/

[Eyeball_Kid]

1. Vance's role is to normalize and placate.

His political career is destined to be a short one. After Trump recedes into the background, there is no place for Vance to go. He's spending all of his political capital on protecting Donny.

[jeffreyi]

2. His job.

Somehow get into office (I won't say elected, he won't be elected), 25th and pardon tsf, and hand the country over to the xtian orcs and tech oligarchs. Rick Wilson has a video out today, what to be ready for. They will not concede anything, no matter what the votes say. Truth to tell, I have no idea what to do if the evidoers manage to pull off a coup. I hope our country is strong enough to withstand the coming chaos.

[Martin68]

3. I assume Vance's role is not to clean up Dump's messes but to serve as an attack dog.

What evidence is there that his role is to clean up messes?

[Random Boomer]

4. Curry or fried chicken

The article totally avoids acknowledging this double racist statement, in which Vance references Trump's "Is she Indian or is she Black?" incident.

[senseandsensibility]

5. It's hard to sanewash cheato when you don't know what sanity is

JD should leave the sanewashing to the corporate media. They're the professionals.