AdVance Warning

"I don't know that I can disrespect someone more than J. D. Vance."

Mitt Romney said that. Mean and nasty aren’t terms typically used to describe Mitt, so it’s significant, because if Trump were to win, J.D. could become president within a couple of years. Who doubts he’d be delighted to invoke the 25th Amendment?

Wrapping himself in fundamentalism and Christian nationalism, Vance is a conscience-free opportunist; and whereas that also describes Trump, with Vance, it’s intentional. Unlike Trump, J.D. is smart. Not a pathological liar like Trump, who seems unable to help himself, Vance is a silky liar who chooses to be. Witness his one-eighty on Trump’s suitability for the presidency.

A poseur willing to say anything to gain advantage, he knows exactly what he’s doing. And, also unlike Trump, he can form words into coherent sentences. Like these, when asked whether Trump lost the election: “Not by the words I would use.” Wow. To Vance, words are meaningless except as weapons aimed at the ill-informed. It’s the Humpty Dumpty theory of language. 

And these, intended to deceive gullible MAGAs: “Did Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their minds in the wake of the 2020 Covid situation?” Excellent question, Senator. Did she? When? How? Got receipts? Just asking questions, right?

More words: “Kamala Harris, who has tried to arrest everything from pro-life activists to her political opponents … used the Department of Justice as a weapon against people.” Again: When? How? What’s the proof? (Never mind: MAGAs don’t require or even want proof. Just saying it is enough to convince.)

From Trump, such blatancy is baseline. Bizarre and disgusting, but expected, predictable. From Vance, who, it’s presumed, can tell a lie from the truth, this mountain of mendacity is even more disqualifying than Trump’s. The hands of someone knowingly pushing premeditated lies so unabashedly ought not be within reach of the levers of power. Or that red button.

Here’s an indicator of where he stands on the Constitution, asked about certifying the 2020 election, one of only two inscribed duties of a Vice President: “I would have asked the states to submit alternative slates of electors,” he averred, contrasting himself with “an-illegal-bridge-too-far-even-for-me” hyper-sycophantic Mike Pence.

After Liz Cheney accurately described him as “unfit for office,” Vance let loose this smacker of all remaining gobs: “She’s not motivated by a love of this country. She’s a resentful, petty, small person,” (motivated) “by an obsessive hatred of the people who cost her Wyoming congressional seat.” Former Congresswoman Cheney was precisely motivated by love of country when, knowing it’d cost her her seat, she sided with the Constitution over the criminal Donald Trump. She did that long before she was voted out of office because of it. Like Trump, J.D. can’t imagine having the courage and decency to take a costly, principled stand.

And let’s not forget his weirdness. Here are his thoughts on his children. 

There’s more to say about Vance, but, with the election days away, there are other issues. Here’s one: Trump’s former Chief of Staff, General John Kelly, finally laid it all out.

Also: the most ubiquitous anti-Harris TV ad says she wants your tax dollars to pay for transgender surgery for prisoners. And here’s guidance from the Trump-appointed Board of Prisons, back in those dark days, regarding gender-affirming treatment of prisoners: “Medical care may include pharmaceutical interventions (e.g., cross-gender hormone therapy), hair removal and surgery (if individualized assessment indicates surgical intervention is applicable).” Accusing others of doing what they do? Whodda thunk, right?

Something that deserves to be widely seen, and won’t be but if it were wouldn’t penetrate a single MAGA skull is this revealing interview with the man who promoted Trump’s fake “reality” show, The Apprentice, coming clean. He confesses to creating the myth of Trump the successful businessman out of whole cloth; describes Trump’s cluelessness and nastiness, acknowledges that without that falsified show, Trump would have remained the third-rate laughing stock in New York City that he was at the time, and would never have become “president.” “I hope it’s not too late,” he said, too late.

Believing Trump’s lies about FEMA, cheering when he calls Kamala Harris a “shit vice-president,” and all the rest, is sad proof of how lost MAGAs are. Trump is explicitly running as a fascist. They don’t care. They relish it.

Hopefully not too late are Republicans joining forces to vote for the Harris/Walz ticket, Liz Cheney topping the increasingly long list. Making the case that a vote for Harris is the only conservative option, hers and Harris’ interview with former conservative talk-show host Charlie Sykes is must-see, especially for undecided voters (do they really exist?)

Let’s end with hilarity: Trump’s fry-cook-fakery at McDonald’s. The store was closed, the actions rehearsed, the “customers” hand-picked Trumpists, told what to do, which they did, knowing it was phony. If that isn’t the perfect metaphor for Trumpism, nothing is. 

And he still hasn’t done a day’s worth (or twenty minutes) of honest work. Kamala Harris, by contrast, has.