He’s JD Vance, and he approves this message — no matter how disgusting it may be.
As the political world now knows, Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, trailing in his gubernatorial bid in Ohio, released a last-gasp ad this week featuring the estranged mother of his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton, attacking her daughter as a “liar.” Ramaswamy did this even though Acton and her brother were removed from their mother’s custody in 1978 when her husband was charged with raping then-12-year-old Amy. The stepfather fled the state as a fugitive — and Acton’s mother went with him.
Bipartisan denunciation rained on Ramaswamy, and deservedly so. Even in the debased state of our politics, attacking a candidate over sexual abuse she experienced as a child is still beyond the pale.
Then, in a moral class all his own, there is Vance. For the vice president, nothing is beyond the pale.
At a rally in Cincinnati on Wednesday afternoon, Vance vigorously defended the ad. “Vivek Ramaswamy had the audacity to run a TV commercial which calls it out like it is and calls Amy Acton a liar,” he told the crowd.
In remarks to reporters, Vance said he was “disgusted” — not by the ad but by Republicans criticizing it. He added that “politics is a tough business” and that his fellow Republicans should “stop whining.”
Republicans have taken a dark turn in the final days before the midterms, pouring hundreds of millions of dollars and the full force of the White House into an effort to convince Americans that their problems aren’t high prices, war and corruption but trans people, Muslims and socialists.
And nobody does vile with as much verve as Vance. In Texas, he insinuated that Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico is gay and a pedophile. In Michigan, he suggested that Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, a Michigan-born Muslim, has a “real sense of revulsion towards native-born Americans” and supports Sharia law.
On Monday, Vance was addressing a couple hundred supporters at a rally in western North Carolina when a man behind him began shouting “Release the Epstein files!” and “God bless our children.”
Vance turned — and saw that the heckler had brown skin. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to have to amend what I said earlier [when] I said that we have had zero illegal border crossings in the United States,” he began. His lips curled into a smile. “But one isn’t bad, right?”
The vice president’s crude calculation — dark skin = illegal immigrant — drew cheers and laughter.
Of course, somebody protesting about the Epstein files is just as likely to be a right winger as a left winger, but Vance declared this man a Democratic prop “for an insidious agenda that would destroy our country from the inside.” No evidence needed.
If there is a bottom below which Vance will not go, advanced LiDAR technology has not been able to find it.
“I’m a devout Christian,” Vance said in a CBS News town hall broadcast over the weekend. “We are all made in the image of God,” he went on, “and I certainly try to live that principle as a public official.”
Right. And I’m Pope Leo.
Vance is often said to be missing a moral core and to be acting whatever part suits him at the moment. But he has a tendency to overlearn the roles. When he was anti-Trump, he wasn’t just an ordinary Never Trumper; he compared Trump to Hitler. Now, as Trump’s top sycophant, he somehow manages to outdo his boss in nastiness. He has all of Trump’s vitriol but none of his humor.
It’s one more reminder that the Trump era won’t end when Trump does. In a couple of weeks, the 2028 presidential nomination battle will begin, and Vance will feud with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who has also built a career on rage and Muslim bashing. Cruz had nothing to say about a man who, during his speech at the Republican midterm convention, repeatedly shouted, “He should be shot!” when Cruz mentioned prominent Democrats.
Vance has championed efforts to portray El-Sayed as disloyal to America. At a Michigan rally last week, he alleged that the Democrat resents people for being “too white” or “too American,” and said, “All of this crap from El-Sayed, the contempt for our heritage, the excuse-making for terrorists, the saying we deserved 9/11 — this is not who you are.”
It’s not who El-Sayed is, either, but rather a pastiche of inventions and guilt-by-association insinuations. Yet Vance was not content to stop there. “You deserve better,” he added, “than a little weasel who should shut his mouth and show a little gratitude to the country that gave him everything.”
The vice president did more of the same in an interview aboard Air Force Two this week with the journalist Mark Halperin. After misrepresenting El-Sayed’s views on Sharia law, he alleged a “lack of gratitude he shows the United States” as evidence “that there’s something very dark going on.”
“OK,” Halperin replied, without challenging him.
That’s typical, because while people have come to understand that Trump says outlandish things that are obviously false, Vance delivers his lies with a debater’s panache that lends them an appearance of truth. Trump may call Somalia a “real shithouse” from the Oval Office (as he did this week), but Vance’s methodical defaming does just as much to poison the discourse.
At a recent rally in Texas, he alleged that Talarico thinks it’s “abusive, ladies and gentlemen, if you don’t support your kid medically transitioning” between genders. He said Talarico’s views on trans children raise questions about his “internet search history.” He called the Democrat a “guy who thinks you’re evil for eating meat.”
As with El-Sayed, Vance followed the fabrications with name-calling. “This guy is a freak. … He is crazy, and we cannot elect Tala-freako.”
Vance brought out the same playbook in Hendersonville, North Carolina, to convince North Carolinians that Democratic Senate nominee Roy Cooper, a moderate former governor, is actually one of those “who would fund transgender illegal-alien surgeries with your money.”
Cooper is “literally sending lawyers after anyone who asks about his age,” Vance alleged. “What does Roy Cooper have to hide? Or is he just worried that he’ll look even older than he is already next to the young communists of the Democrat Party?”
That did sound crazy — so I decided to look that one up. It turns out a local publication had informed Cooper’s campaign that anonymous “sources have told us” Cooper has health problems. Lawyers for the 69-year-old Democrat responded by calling that false and defamatory — a reality that has nothing in common with Vance’s fabrication.
And so it goes, stop after stop: a customized package of lies, insinuations and dehumanizing epithets.
“You have feuds all the time, more than most vice presidents I’ve covered,” Halperin told Vance this week.
“Ha, ha, ha!” the vice president responded, in the mirthless guffaw he uses when challenged. He explained that “these guys are fundamentally crazy. I don’t like human beings who present to themselves as being reasonable, rational, moderate Democrats, and yet … they’re just crazy people.” After consideration, he added, “maybe Talarico’s a nice guy. He’s just an oddball who seems to talk a lot about transgender children.”
If you don’t have anything nice to say, come sit by JD Vance.
People notice that, even by today’s vitriolic standard, Vance’s ugliness stands out. At the CBS town hall (in which Vance blamed Joe Biden for high gas prices), a naturalized citizen asked Vance, “Why are you scapegoating immigrants for the issues you’re supposed to be solving as a vice president?” A nun asked Vance how his faith justifies the behavior of ICE and the labeling of immigrants as terrorists.
“To the extent that my rhetoric has been imperfect here, that’s on me,” Vance said. “My goal here is not to dehumanize any immigrant.”
Except when he accuses them of eating cats and dogs?
Vance was interrupted at his Ohio event Wednesday by another heckler. This one appeared to have white skin, so Vance went after his personal hygiene. “It was very obvious that he has not washed his hair in about three months,” he said. “And we all know that the people who haven’t washed their hair in three months, they vote for Democrats.”
He moved on — to attacking Acton and her anger at the ad featuring her estranged mother. “A person who is more worried about whether somebody says something mean about them,” Vance remarked, “that person should never serve in the governor’s mansion.”
Incredibly, he then insinuated that Acton quit as Ohio’s health director in 2020 because of alcohol abuse — elevating a smear campaign, peddled by Ramaswamy allies, that she’s an alcoholic.
“She kind of disappeared for a little while,” Vance said. When somebody in the crowd called out “alcohol!” Vance laughed and repeated the slur. “Somebody said alcohol,” he said. “You can say it, sir. I can’t.”
But he just did. If it’s ugly, JD Vance will go there — every time.
Dana Milbank is a Washington Sun Perspectives columnist.
Understand the complexities — and absurdities — of Washington as only Dana can describe them. To get his columns in your inbox, sign up here.
More Perspectives:
Matt K. Lewis: Mike Johnson Really Needs to Stop Insisting the Polls Are Wrong
Forum: They Ran for Congress. They Lost. What Have They Learned?