Vice President JD Vance wants to be a tough guy so bad, but his efforts to ape President Donald Trump’s unique brand of malevolent bullying just do not land. Sure, Vance is malevolent, and sure, he is a bully. But no one is scared of him—and no one is going to bend the knee to JD unless they are doubled over with laughter.
On Thursday, Vance decided to tell what he clearly thought was a story that made him look like a cool tough guy, but instead just highlighted how much Vance lacks power or charisma or any other appealing human characteristic.
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Vance was at some Breitbart event, a consolation prize for the fact that he wasn’t even invited to the funeral of someone as profoundly evil as former Vice President Dick Cheney. Since he was in front of a bunch of Breitbartians, presumably, he decided to tell a story about how he texted Jeff Bezos, the kazillionaire who owns The Washington Post, and told Bezos he should hire Breitbart’s White House bureau chief, Matthew Boyle, to run the Post’s political coverage.
Vance gushed about how Boyle was the “most well-sourced [journalist] in Washington.” You wouldn’t know it from Boyle’s page over at Breitbart, which is mostly just “EXCLUSIVES” where he plays stenographer to whichever administration official feels like laundering their BS through his publication.
Somehow, Bezos did not leap at the chance, leading Vance to conclude his cool story with, “Unfortunately for The Washington Post, they did not take my advice.”
You don’t say.
It seems like Vance, in texting Bezos, thought he could tap into that whole “cajole and threaten the media” vibe that Trump has, but it did not work at all. Even as Trump descends into an incoherent mess, he somehow maintains a hold over his subjects. His malice is somehow so appealing, so brutal, that everyone leans in to do his bidding.
But Vance, not so much. Instead, he has a litany of experiences where people gather en masse to tell him what a doofus he is. Remember the trip to Greenland? The one where the residents expressed such comprehensive dislike for him that his entire trip was reduced to visiting a space base?
England was no better for Vance, where his tormenters—er, protesters—plastered the city with printouts of the meme where Vance has a giant baby head.
Back stateside, the residents of a Vermont ski town mocked him so mercilessly that he made his family change hotels.
Vance simply doesn’t have whatever makes people bend the knee to Trump. He’s never going to threaten the media into giving him millions of dollars or installing his preferred person into a job they are not qualified for (looking at you, Bari Weiss). Vance doesn’t strike fear as much as a sort of lingering distaste, as if you stepped in dogshit and couldn’t quite get your shoes clean.
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Because of that, Vance is reduced to puffing out his chest and bragging about his cool texting buddy Jeff Bezos, overlooking the fact that the story makes him sound like the pathetic weenie he is.
Lisa Needham
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