Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio is introduced during the Republican National Convention Tuesday, July 16, 2024, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
DICTATOR CURIOUS?
Disgraced former President Trump picked a running mate with some hardcore authoritarian views. Just how committed to democracy is Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH)?
- Trump once famously fantasized about being an American dictator on “day one.” Now, he’s chosen a veep, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), who seems to think that leaves the whole rest of the year to do a lot of very dictator-adjacent stuff. Vance has come a long way since he worried Trump might be “America’s Hitler,” and has since taken a lot of positions that seem… well, like he’s the kind of guy who’s going to encourage some of Trump’s worst strong man instincts.
- Like Trump, Vance holds a deep seated belief that the government is rigged against the Republican Party. Vance espouses unfounded claims about a “deep state” cabal bent on thwarting Trump’s agenda. Vance is precisely the guy that the architect of Project 2025, the notorious right-wing plan to remake the federal government in the first six months of a Trump presidency, wanted for this job. Project 2025 is the controversial plan written by Trump’s buddies that calls for supercharging executive branch power, embedding hardcore Trump loyalists throughout the government and ramming through a host of right-wing policies. That’s basically exactly what Vance wants to do, and more.
- Vance recently told a podcast he thinks Trump should “fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state.” And if the courts object to this move? Vance said Trump should ignore them — a stance fundamentally at odds with how our Democracy functions. Unsurprisingly, this is the same guy who said wouldn’t have voted to certify the 2020 election and fundraised for January 6th rioters.
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Vance is the kind of guy who can articulate Trump’s gut instincts, and make his ideas happen, Zack Beauchamp, a senior correspondent at Vox, told the What A Day podcast.
- Vance has evolved from a one-time “Never Trumper” to the “physical incarnation of Trumpism,” who in some ways is “more aggressive” about the policy and the ideology that’s been built around the MAGA movement than Trump himself, Beauchamp said. “I think JD Vance will be a good executor of Trump’s will and in power, he will do what Trump needs him to do in order to enact his major plans for reshaping the American government,” Beauchamp said.
- Vance likes to embrace foreign strongmen, too, just like Trump. He has called for the “de-woke-ification” of schools inspired by Hungary’s authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and dismissed the idea that Putin could march in Poland or Berlin as “preposterous”. Vance insisted Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk should “consider showing some appreciation” Tusk criticized Republicans senators for blocking aid to Ukraine. (Also Vance: “I gotta be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other.”)
President Biden has called Vance a “clone of Trump.” Time will tell if he’s just a clone… or, perhaps, some kind of unfortunate upgrade.
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NEWS NEWS NEWS
Trump will demand peace talks between Ukraine and Russia if he wins the election, Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán wrote in a letter to other European leaders obtained by the Financial Times. Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Viktor Orbán: Three of the world’s most trustworthy leaders!
A New York jury found Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) guilty on all counts in his federal corruption trial for a broad scheme to use the power of his office in exchange for hundreds of thousands in cash payments, gold bars and a car. Damn, you can’t even get bribed in gold bars anymore, because of “woke.”
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