Questions JD Vance Can't Answer
J.D. Vance, the Republican nominee for Vice President of the United States, deserves some credit for sporadically responding to questions from the press corps, in contrast to Kamala Harris, the presidential nominee of the other party. But at the same time, there are lines of questioning that the Senator from Ohio won’t answer because any honest response would jeopardize his all-important relationship with his ticket-mate, Donald Trump.
For instance, how could Vance react to the following query:
“Senator Vance, President Trump has repeatedly insisted that the large, enthusiastic crowds Kamala Harris has been drawing across the country are ‘fakes,’ in which throngs of many thousands recorded in video and photographs are actually illusions created by AI to fill empty space and to save the Vice President from embarrassment. In fact, President Trump insists that non-existent, conjured crowds constitute illegal “election interference” that should “disqualify” Ms. Harris from running for president.”
“Do you agree with President Trump on this accusation and if so, what evidence has he shared with you to prove his allegations of fraud?”
Vance can’t answer the question because there is no evidence—none—to suggest that Trump’s charges are true, or even serious, while hundreds of journalists of every stripe, law enforcement officials and participants in these rallies have stepped forward to testify that the cheering multitudes were made up of real, three-dimensional human beings, not high-tech phantoms.
Senator Vance cannot agree to that obvious proposition because to do so would be to acknowledge that the all-powerful figure who selected him as a running mate was demonstrably, irresponsibly wrong or, at the very least, foolishly mistaken.
Another question about recent controversies would be equally uncomfortable for the Republican aspirant for the second most prominent job in the country.
“Senator Vance, President Trump told a story in some detail at his recent Mar-a-Lago press conference in which he described taking a troubled helicopter ride with one-time San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown who, some thirty years ago, dated Kamala Harris. According to the former President, Mayor Brown, approaching possible death in a crash landing, told Trump “terrible things” about his long-ago inamorata, Kamala. President Trump has repeatedly reaffirmed this story and threatened to sue the New York Times for questioning it, and bringing up the fact that Willie Brown denies he ever rode a helicopter with Trump, ever had a dangerous helicopter ride of any kind, and ever said “terrible things” about Kamala, or in any way discussed his personal life with Trump. Do you think President Trump is doing the right thing to contradict numerous eye-witnesses and insist on the veracity of his now oft-repeated account?”
Even some of Trump’s most devoted followers are willing to assert that some of his odd obsessions are at least counter-productive if not outright, and easily disprovable, lies. The fact that it is impossible to conceive of J.D. Vance even speaking privately to his running mate to urge that he attack Ms. Harris on the issues, rather than airing his peculiar and demonstrably imaginary grievances, suggests the Ohio Senator’s limitations as a potential Vice President. Mike Pence, Trump’s previous choice for the number two position, had the courage to stand up against his boss regarding his dishonest insistence on overturning a “stolen election”.
Would a Vice President Vance ever show similar courage in giving priority to honoring the Constitution above subservience to his boss?
The line of questions that Vance can’t handle might well go all the way back to the beginning of Trump’s political career, with his five years of insistent, lunatic allegations that Barack Obama was actually born in Africa, not Hawaii. Beginning in 2011, Trump the TV star and aspiring candidate repeatedly asserted, based on no evidence, that America’s first black president had created a fraudulent birth certificate to hide his disqualifying foreign birth. Only weeks before the election of 2016 (in which Trump defeated Hillary Clinton despite his popular vote loss) he called a press conference to finally affirm what the sane world already knew, that Barack Obama was born in the USA and therefore counted as a legitimate, and legitimately re-elected, President of the United States.
Like other conspiracy theories President Trump has regularly embraced, the most striking aspect of birtherism was the utter and complete absence of any kind of evidentiary support to back its claims. It would be reassuring, in that context, to believe that a Vice President of integrity would question, or at least respectfully advise, the chief executive if he advanced groundless fixations to his own, and the nation’s, detriment. In Trump’s special case, this would only require that his second in command acknowledge the groundless nature of preposterous preoccupations that the former president himself doesn’t actually believe.
Has Michael ever addressed WHY Obama continues today to avoid releasing his college records including his admission application as a Foreign student?
Sorry to see that Donald Trump continues to live in Michael’s head rent free. Instead of stirring up trouble over very old issues and some other irrelevant issues, I would have thought some attention to the Harris/Walz threats to us would have risen to the top of the list of things to worry about. Such as: why push voters toward a ticket that hates Jews, thinks the atrocities of October 7 were well deserved, agrees that Israel is a colonizing power that commits genocide, prefers a wide-open Southern border, and favors the mutilation of children in the name of “health care”? To name a few.
Instead, we get questions Vance cannot answer as to issues to quote a famous woman, “what difference does it make?”
Before we get there, what is the source of the assumption the Vice President is charged with advising the President about anything? The Constitution gives the VP no such responsibility. It says the President must seek the advice and consent of the Senate for various issues, but nowhere is it said he should or must seek the counsel of the Vice President. And when, if ever, did any Vice President get credit for doing so? Truman is supposed to have said the Vice President is as important as a bucket of warm spit. Having served as VP to one of the most totalitarian Presidents in US history, he should know.
In the order of the issues presented.
As for photographs of crowds said to be fake, wasn’t it the White House who claimed the videos of an obviously impaired President Biden were cheap fakes? Does Trump have a basis for his claim? I don’t know, but I can say what the mainstream media, including hundreds of “journalists” say about it has no credibility.
The issues raised by the way the 2020 election was conducted are not undisputed. Several experienced lawyers, Constitutional scholars and academics have said the role of the VP when counting the Electoral College votes is not merely ministerial and, instead, if there is reason to question how those votes were cast, his Constitutional duty is to act accordingly and refuse to count those votes. There were many questions about the way the vote was handled in several key states, none of which were resolved. Some of these questions prompted Congress to pass a new law. If there were no problems, then why was legislation required? It is not some lunatic fringe theory.
Indeed, the history of the vote counting is full of examples of the Democrats contesting the elections. Were they violating their duty?
VP Pence made one judgement. Vance would make a different judgment. To say the one shows good judgment while the other shows venal motive is absurd. To say one shows courage and the other some form of cowardice is shameful.
So, Trump has a differing memory of a helicopter ride with Harris’s benefactor Willie Brown 30 years ago and that is worthy of discussion?
The retelling of the birther issue misses the actual issue, and ignores the efforts Obama made to avoid telling us what happened when he applied for his US passport, or his application to college. Why would he refuse to produce these documents?
The actual issue is that it makes no difference where Obama was born because his mother was a citizen and that makes him a US citizen. So, while he put up such a fight where there was no legal issue, the question is: what was he hiding? And more significantly, what difference does it make today?
The issues that confront us in the election deserve discussion, not distraction. My life partner who is very wise told me if Michael wants to stir the pot he’ll need a bigger spoon.