Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, arrives on the floor during the first day of the 2024 Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum, Monday, July 15, 2024, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
CONVENTIONAL FLIMFLAM
Trump emerged from Saturday’s failed assassination attempt with a call for unity. He then named Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) as his running mate, a choice that undercuts that whole unity thing.
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Well, that was quick: Trump’s “unity” phrase seems to be already sputtering out within its first couple of days. Trump kicked off the Republican National Convention by tagging the Ohio senator as his No. 2, prompting reporters to instantly remind everyone that Vance once said Trump might be “America’s Hitler,” or just “a cynical asshole like Nixon.” Vance has called Trump “cultural heroin,” and, before the 2016 election, Vance told a radio interview: “I think that I’m going to vote third party because I can’t stomach Trump.”
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Yeah, yeah, Republicans are hypocrites. We knew that. But then there are Vance’s extremist views on abortion and 2020 election denialism. He opposes exceptions to abortion bans in cases of rape and incest, and applauded the overturning of Roe vs. Wade. More recently, Vance reacted to the weekend shooting at a Trump rally by immediately putting responsibility on Biden. Vance said it was “not some isolated incident,” and spuriously claimed the Biden campaign’s rhetoric against Trump “led directly” to the shooting. An incendiary statement like that “ought to disqualify him,” commented David Axelrod, who served as a senior advisor to former President Barack Obama. But of course, this is America in 2024, so it didn’t. Vance and his giant head arrived at the convention on Monday to blaring country music and big, cheerful waves.
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All of this follows Trump’s vow to “UNITE AMERICA!” in the wake of the attempt on his life. Trump’s campaign made a big deal of telling reporters that the shooting in Pennsylvania, in which his ear was grazed and a rally attendee was killed, had prompted him to run on national unity. In a Sunday interview with the Washington Examiner, Trump said his planned acceptance speech on Thursday would have been “a humdinger” aimed at President Biden. Instead, Trump claimed he tore up that speech, and directed speakers, as the Washington Post reported, to “dial it down, not dial it up.” Then again, in a social media post, Trump began with what may have been an inadvertently revealing typo: “As me move forward….”
The convention lineup hardly features a bunch of folks known for dialing things down.
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One of the first speakers will be ultra-MAGA psycho Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who reacted to the rally shooting by attacking Democrats as “the party of pedophiles, murdering the innocent unborn, violence, and bloody, meaningless, endless wars.” There’s also Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson (R-NC), who has referred to members of the LGBTQ+ community as “maggots.” Then there’s Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who has called for an end to guaranteed money for social security and Medicare, downplayed the Jan. 6 insurrection, and dismissed climate change as “bullshit.”
Trump’s “unity convention” is off to a great start!
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-Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), on Trump’s new calls for “unity."
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