Dem
47
GOP
53
This story is about a week old, and we debated whether it was even worth noting. We finally decided that it is, for reasons we will explain in short order.
On Tuesday of last week, the White House had a press conference focused on the 2026 World Cup, which will be partly hosted by the United States (in cooperation, to the extent that's possible right now, with Canada and Mexico). The primary purpose of the event was to announce that Andrew Giuliani, son of Rudy, would be leading a task force that will oversee final planning for the event.
It was J.D. Vance, however, who ended up stealing all the headlines. For some reason, somebody decided to put a microphone in front of the VP, even though he's not actually on the task force. And Vance decided to make this comment:
We'll have visitors from close to 100 countries. We want them to come, we want them to celebrate, we want them to watch the games. But when the time is up, they'll have to go home, otherwise they'll have to talk to Secretary Noem.
By all accounts (and we read several dozen), the line landed with an absolute thud. Like, you remember when Johnny Carson sometimes used to do a fake golf swing when one of his jokes didn't land? Well, Vance would have needed a full course's worth of fake swings.
We do not know if Vance was freestyling, or if he had that "joke" pre-planned and all cued up. We similarly don't know if it was actually an attempt at humor, or an attempt to score political points, or both. But we do know two things. The first, and more immediate, is that this is simply not a joking matter. Even if someone thinks that the administration is somehow doing the "right" thing, people are being deported without due process and thrown into brutal foreign prisons. Either that is outright wrong or, if you take a staunchly anti-immigrant viewpoint, it's a regrettable necessity. What it isn't is funny, and anyone who thinks it's a joking matter is an asshole (note: deliberately left uncensored).
The second thing we know is that Vance is trying desperately to present himself as the next Donald Trump and it just Does. Not. Work. Trump is also an asshole (again, deliberately left uncensored), but he's the genuine article. That is to say, the president isn't just pretending to be a bloviating, self-aggrandizing, angry, retrograde xenophobe. He really IS a bloviating, self-aggrandizing, angry, retrograde xenophobe. That's what the MAGA crowd wants, and they appreciate that Trump is the real deal.
Vance is very clearly not a nice person, but he's also not Trump, and his efforts to get off a Trumpy "bon mot" or mount a Trumpy attack on "the libs" or come up with a Trumpy nickname for some "enemy" come off as entirely not genuine. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) had the exact same problem. And we predict that when Vance mounts the inevitable presidential run, he'll suffer the same fate—the base just won't buy what he's selling. (Z)