I don’t know what MAGAs usuallty say, but Trump is constantly demeaning, as Hitler demeaned the Jews, the brown people trying to get into the country, even if they are legally seeking asylum. He doesn’t say, “I love all these Mexicans–just wish they’d come here legally.”
So that can be thrown in Vance’s face during debates, etc.
As for Melania, she clearly got a free pass from the fascists because she is white (had she not been, then of course they would have made up some sort of excuse anyway…).
Vance had Trump nailed, but then got on his knees and begged for forgiveness. This guy is supposed to be presidential material? Principles? What are those?
I expect most of the folks here to shit all over JD as Trump’s VP pick (or any other pick he made, honestly), but the pick signals to me that Trump is looking to double down on an economically populist message. That was the one thing that really made him seem to stand out in the 2016 Republican primaries – he promised to protect Social Security and Medicare, revive American manufacturing, overturn unfair trade agreements that had given away the store to foreign nations paying their workers subsistence wages.
Now, of course, when he got into office he turned over economic policy to free market zealots like Russ Vought and Americans for Tax Reform. But, for reasons I cannot personally fathom, his voters who feel left behind by the modern American economy never fully lost faith in him. Vance is well positioned help Trump push an economically populist message that will help reenergize and reengage these voters.
Nikki Haley would have been the smart choice, and I wouldn’t have shit on that decision, but I would have shit on her for being a principle-free sycophant (just like JD) for having accepted the job (though she had already proved that by sucking up to get the job).
Why? Vance is a rich VC guy in tight with other West Coast fascists like Thiel et al.
Yeah, he can try to resell the whole hillbilly elegy thing, but I don’t think it’s believable to anyone at this point.
His basic logic is that Vance can serve as an attack dog while Trump pretends to be above the fray. I don’t think that will work because 1) Trump has no message discipline,* 2) Trump hates anyone else to be in the spotlight.
*Actually, it has been pointed out, and I think correctly, that Trump has been listening to his advisors and managed to act more normal at times recently. My caveat is: at times. Trump ultimately doesn’t have enough self-control to play the game right.
According to Wikipedia, Usha Vance was born in San Diego, to Indian immigrants, both of whom are professors. She is a lawyer, and was a law clerk to Chief Justice John Roberts.
The problem here, that my friend pointed out, is that Project 2025 wants to end birthright citizenship and impose stricter conditions on people in such circumstances. This can be thrown in Vance’s face.
Vance is also a big proponent of Project 2025 overall, from which Trump is now frantically and ineptly trying to distance himself. It’s another inconvenience to having Vance on the ticket.
It wasn’t Palin or Quayle’s inexperience that was the problem. The problem was they are morons. And Bush still won with Quayle. He might be inexperienced. He might be reprehensible. He’s not stupid.
I follow some pages that slant very right. Today I’ve been seeing a lot of “Watch the movie but you really should read the book.” I wouldn’t be so sure that it’s not believable.
But those are right-wingers who already like Vance.
At the time Vance was selling the book on TV, he was a loud Never Trumper. So that ties that book to that time period and messaging. I don’t think he can now go, “Oh my book was great and I’ve become a Trump oral colonoscopist since then–but the book is really great–that’s still really ME!”
Oh boo hoo, people don’t like the guy that explicitly thinks he needs to do “extra-constitutional” actions to retake the country. He’s an open authoritarian that is bankrolled by another authoritatarion (Thiel) and has a fascist philosophers (Yarvin) as his intellectual backing.
Well, maybe Vance wouldn’t be loyal to him in that case. But, I think at just a more general level, Trump chose to go with the person who has been most clear that he would choose loyalty to Trump over loyalty to his Constitutional oath.
I haven’t seen the movie, but I liked the book. I bought it, recommended it, and loaned it to friends. I’m from Appalachia (West Virginia).
He seemed honest, and not really ideological. He said things that pissed off both sides of the divide. I generally like that.
I started looking askance (is that another word like “elegy”?) when he ran for the U.S. Senate in Ohio, and said that he didn’t care about Ukraine, or what happened there, and then walked the comment back after being informed that there were a lot of Ukrainian-Americans in Ohio.
He sounds like a non-moron in this article, but what he says is also quite diffuse and makes it hard to pin down exactly why he ended up supporting Trump.
Everything he originally said about Trump is true on the surface. The fact that he ended up meeting Trump and liking him isn’t really relevant to the fact that Trump is a dangerous and malevolent demagogue.
I think that I would personally like Trump too if I met him and he was cool to me. I also don’t disagree with Trump on every single policy he has supported. None of that changes the fact that Trump, fundamentally, is evil and destructive.
Anyhow, an interesting if somewhat confusing read…
I think I ended up being wrong for strange, unpredictable reasons–but if being wrong in this way has a chastening effect, it is to make me more cognizant of the unpredictability of the times.
In any case, I always state my reasons, and I think the reasons I stated above about Vance are correct.
