Timothy Birdnow

J.D. Vance's career appears to be heading South faster than did Sherman and, although he was the obvious successor to President Trump, he seemed to go out of his way to blow it up with his recent appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast.

American Thinker analyzes the event and the article's author concludes Vance is a light-skinned version of Barack Obama, a social climber who is angry at President Trump for his own failure with the Memorandum of Understanding with Iran.

In addition to saying the Jews wanted "endless war" and that they were the ones trying to keep the war going (for reasons that he does not articulate) Vance said of his boss:

And "by the way,” he wanted to make clear, "I’ve never seen a single piece of credible evidence that the president of the United States engaged in wrongdoing with minors.”

Clintonesque, no question - Vance seems to be engaging in a CYA operation, suggesting his boss may have molested children while not saying he molested children.

It all looks pretty bad when viewed from a certain angle, for certain.

The author thinks Vance is mad because Trump sent him on his first big-boy assignment and he fouled it up and now wants to deflect blame.

Perhaps. I was displeased with the choice of Vance in the first place, as regular readers of this blog may well remember. Vance had trashed Trump early on, sucking up to the RINO wing of the party and demanded Trump resign from office in his first term. Suddenly he was a big MAGA guy, and anyone who sells their loyalty that cheaply is suspect to me.

But he's been very good since and I wonder if the things he's saying now are not being said for strategic reasons to advance the Administration's policies.

It is no secret that Mr. Trump has been unhappy with Netenyahu and Israel through this Iran war. But Trump can't come out and say it himself, or at least it wouldn't be a good idea; it would suggest a break in our relations with Israel and the Iranians would unquestionably try to exploit that. So what do you do? Past Presidents have generally used their Veeps to do this kind of grunt work. Vice Presidents are political hatchet men, doing the work Presidents Just Won't Do.

Eisenhower was the master of that; he dumped every nasty job on Nixon and then left Tricky Dick twisting in the wind when the heat came down. "Oh, you'll have to ask Dick about that" and he went off to play golf while a poor stammering Nixon had to explain that, no, he hadn't stopped beating his wife.

At any rate that is the traditional role of the Vice President and Vance's comments may well be things Trump wants put out there to put a little fear in Israel so they stop with the cowboy diplomacy and get on board.

On that matter of the legalese about Trump and Epstein, I can see that too being a tactic that Trump may want. One of the things Trump has always done is lay little traps for the media and the Democrats, get them chasing after shadows, and Vance may well have advanced this to get Trump's enemies back into a feeding frenzy while Trump looks like the adult in the room.

And of course while Trump may not agree with the crazy alt-right guys like Tucker Carlson he is savvy enough to know they represent an audience he dare not take for granted. So he tosses them a bone to get them out in November. Nothing that has been said is binding in any way.

Is all this the case? I don't know and neither does anyone else. But I'm prepared to give Mr. Vance the benefit of the doubt right now and will adopt a wait-and-see approach to him. He may well wind up being just another political turncoat who will dumb the gal he brung to the dance, or he may be a loyal soldier. I think we have to see more to decide.

Sadly many are ready to give up on Vance in favor of Marco Rubio, who has been very good as Secretary of State but has no executive experience - and furthermore he was not just a member of the Gang of Eight when he was in the Senate (a bipartisan group including John McCain who wanted an amnesty for illegals) but he attacked Conservatives, calling us racists, for opposing him. To me that bespeaks a serious character flaw that I'm not comfortable with. If Rubio would address that and admit "I really screwed up there" I'd be much happier with him.

Of course there is also DeSantis who has been excellent as Florida Governor and would be a good choice. But he attended Yale for his undergraduate and Harvard Law, which makes him suspect, if you ask me.

Still, of the three I like him best, but it is unclear if the American People will like him best. Low information voters may not know who he is and as a result the media will be able to define him.

One of the reasons I supported Trump for the second term was that Trump was unshakeable, had taken everything they could throw at him and was still standing. That meant they had nothing they could use against him anymore. DeSantis will be fresh meat. Granted, so too would be Rubio or Vance, but they at least have gone through a lot of this and the public will know the dirt the media digs up is purely political.

At any rate Vance was the logical choice and unfortunately he's blowing up his chances (and perhaps ours) with this. I'm willing to give him another chance, but he'd better straighten up and fly right. We do NOT need another Benedict RNCold.

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