Dem
47
GOP
53
This has not be been a good week for J.D. Vance. First, he was sent to Hungary to make sure that Donald Trump's favorite authoritarian, Viktor Orbán, got another term. Orbán was crushed, with the opposition getting the two-thirds majority they needed to rewrite the Hungarian Constitution to undo some of the damage Orbán did. Oops.
Then Vance was tasked with making peace with Iran and got nowhere, possibly due to his approach as a negotiator, which is telling the other side "my way or the highway" and they took the highway (well, the Strait). Maybe he was ordered to make sure the talks failed, but if he wasn't given those orders, he really botched it on his own. That's two strikes against him to start with.
The third one came on Tuesday when he showed up at a meeting of Turning Point USA on the campus of the University of Georgia, in Athens, GA. Talking to TPUSA students in a reddish state should have been a walk in the park—at least compared to trying to convince a bunch of ayatollahs that they shouldn't build nuclear weapons. It didn't go well. To start with, the arena was two-thirds empty, and it wasn't even the largest arena on campus. On top of that, there were awkward questions and sharp criticism of Trump. One attendee, Joseph Bercher, a Catholic, said he voted for Trump but he is no longer a Trump supporter on account of the fake Dr. Jesus image. Jesse Williams said the image was distasteful. Yet another student, C.J. Santini, was unhappy about Trump attacking Leo, saying: "It's just stupid. Stupid." Blake McCluggage did not approve of Trump's profane Easter Sunday message.
However, rather than try to defend Trump, Vance—a recent convert to Catholicism who has unsuccessfully tried to get his Hindu wife to convert as well—blamed the Pope. He said: "It would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality..." Is it not possible that Leo feels that threatening to wipe out a country of 90 million people that was not threatening the U.S. might be immoral?
Vance was also heckled by the audience. One person yelled out: "Jesus Christ does not support genocide!" Another yelled out: "You're killing children! You're bombing children!" This could have been a reference to the U.S. bombing a primary school in southern Iran, killing 150 children. Vance did get the message. He said: "I recognize that young voters do not love the policy we have in the Middle East, OK. I understand."
OK, three strikes this week, but the 2028 Republican primaries are not this week. They are—you got it—in 2028. Still, any aura Vance had of being unstoppable is gone for now. It is also possible that Trump likes the idea of messing with Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio and wants them to go after each other for his amusement. His plan could be first embarrass one of them, then embarrass the other one, rinse and repeat. (V)