All aspects of Vance's personality expand and contract to fill whatever cause or purpose serves his personal interest. This is evident throughout his career.

He's a muckraker is James Donald.

When he went to visit Europe and gave his famous tirade, it was very telling he didn't meet with the German chancellor but met with the leader of AfD, you know, the guys with well proven neo nazi and fascist links. He's not interested in being a gentleman, we're playing a different kind of game now - game where they believe winner takes everything and goals justify the means.

JD is a big fan of Curtis Yarvin who popularized the idea that democracy must be overcome and be replaced by some kind of oligarchy.

This is what the global alt-right movement, which the AfD is a part of, wants.

They see democracy as a weak system and want to replace it by a kind of neo-feudalism.

It’s clear that Ukraine, that fights against the Russian version of that system, must be made to be an example than democracy can not win.

He did meet with the german chancellor, days prior to the meeting with Merz and not in Munich but in Paris.

he's just a small hillbilly boy from ohio

With eyeliner.

It makes more sense when you understand he is an actor reading the script he is given. He cannot act independently and what he says has no relation to his actual opinions, if he even has any of his own. This is true for most of the GOP at this point. Exceptions include Romney.

Let’s not strip agency from these people. They didn’t magically end up in these positions, they actively worked for this shit.

They have used their agency to give up their agency to the GOP hivemind.

I too keep thinking of Romney as an exception but his voting record doesn't seem to bear that out. Mitch McConnell has voted against more of Trump's nominees than Romney.

Everything Trump touches ... dies.

RIP Elon RIP Vance etc

These people got into bed with Trump of their own free will. Maybe there wasn't much to respect about them in the first place?

vance may be the most unlikeable person i have ever heard speak. he just has no charisma and is constantly crying crocodile tears about the dumbest thing you've ever heard of.

I can't see this as Vance acting without prior consultation and authorisation from Trump - its too serious a breach of protocol and tradition.

For that reason, this smells of a pre-planned ambush.

Former integrity?

He got his start cosplaying as a former downtrodden redneck from the holler, when he’s from suburban Ohio.

I read 2/3 of his book when it came out and nothing pissed me off more than realizing exactly what you just said. His GRANDMOTHER was Appalachian. Not him. He's a fucking carpetbagger

>> But as Romney surveyed the crop of Republicans running for Senate in 2022, it was clear that more Hawleys were on their way. Perhaps most disconcerting was J. D. Vance, the Republican candidate in Ohio. “I don’t know that I can disrespect someone more than J. D. Vance,” Romney told me. They’d first met years earlier, after he read Vance’s best-selling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. Romney was so impressed with the book that he hosted the author at his annual Park City summit in 2018. Vance, who grew up in a poor, dysfunctional family in Appalachia and went on to graduate from Yale Law School, had seemed bright and thoughtful, with interesting ideas about how Republicans could court the white working class without indulging in toxic Trumpism. Then, in 2021, Vance decided he wanted to run for Senate, and re­invented his entire persona overnight. Suddenly, he was railing against the “childless left” and denouncing Indigenous Peoples’ Day as a “fake holiday” and accusing Joe Biden of manufacturing the opioid crisis “to punish people who didn’t vote for him.” The speed of the MAGA makeover was jarring.

>> “I do wonder, how do you make that decision?” Romney mused to me as Vance was degrading himself on the campaign trail that summer. “How can you go over a line so stark as that—and for what?” Romney wished he could grab Vance by the shoulders and scream: This is not worth it! “It’s not like you’re going to be famous and powerful because you became a United States senator. It’s like, really? You sell yourself so cheap?” The prospect of having Vance in the caucus made Romney uncomfortable. “How do you sit next to him at lunch?”

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/11/mitt-ro...

Vance has always been an obsequious pillock.