J.D. Vance Walks Into a Bar...

Stop me if you've heard this one before.

Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, is seen in the U.S. Capitol after a vote on Thursday, May 11, 2023. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

The ersatz intellectual, formerly known as the author of “Hillbilly Elegy”, wants you to know that Donald Trump is really a deeply underrated wit, and that he — the junior senator from Ohio — is also a pretty damn funny guy.

And that all you folks just don’t get the joke.

So, for example, the other day, when Trump told Sean Hannity that he would be a “dictator” for a day — shutting the border, drilling, and presumably cleaning out the vermin — J.D. Vance rushed to Xitter to… explain:

You may have thought that Trump’s super-power was shamelessness. But Vance assures us, no, it is that “he’s the most quick witted leader in a generation.”

And if you don’t think this dictatorship stuff is hilarious, you need a chill pill.

J.D. then followed up with his own attempt at rib-tickling wit: “JD Vance Demands DOJ Go After Washington Post Writer Who Called For ‘Resistance’ Against Trump ‘Dictatorship’”

How droll.

Ruth Marcus reports:

Sen. J.D. Vance wants Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate my colleague Robert Kagan for allegedly inciting insurrection with his recent essay warning of the “increasingly inevitable” dangers of dictatorship under Donald Trump.

For good measure, the Ohio Republican wants Secretary of State Antony Blinken to look into whether Kagan’s wife, Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland, should have her security clearance revoked because her “close relationship with her husband might compromise her judgment about the best interests of the United States.”

Ah, but Vance wants you to know that this is Jonathan Swift-level higher-order satire. He writes:

Based on my review of public charging documents that the Department of Justice has filed in courts of law, I suspect that one or both of you might characterize this article as an invitation to “insurrection,” a manifestation of criminal “conspiracy,” or an attempt to bring about civil war.

Don’t you get the joke? Vance wants to make sure you get the Yale Law School parody:

“As you know, prosecutors in the Department of Justice have embraced several stunningly broad interpretations of federal law in their bid to ensnare President Trump in criminal wrongdoing,” he writes. “For example, prosecutors have relied on a broad reading of 18 U.S.C. § 241 to argue that President Trump has conspired to ‘threaten’ or ‘intimidate’ one or more persons in their free exercise of the ‘right to vote, and to have one’s vote counted.’

By that standard, I would like to know whether a supporter of President Trump might be ‘intimidate[d]’ into foregoing the right to vote after learning that Robert Kagan has encouraged large blue states to rebel against the United States if Trump is elected. If so, I wonder further whether the editors of The Washington Post, having put Kagan’s call to arms in print, might have conspired to suppress the vote.”

His point: If lying about the election, defrauding the government, attempting to overturn the election, threatening retribution, and inciting a violent attack on the capitol is an “insurrection”… then so is an op-ed piece in the Washington Post pointing all of this out.

Shecky Greene, call your office, because this is hil-f*cking-arious stuff. Right?

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In a normal world, notes Marcus, “Vance’s missive would be dismissible for what it is: a preening, Trump-toadying stunt. No sane Justice Department would take any action other than tossing Vance’s letter in the trash. No sane State Department would touch Nuland’s clearance.”

But on Earth 1.0 (the one we inhabit), Vance’s stunt actually has to be taken seriously “as a preview of what life under a Trump presidency — or, to use Kagan’s term, a Trump dictatorship — might entail. Because we know, not from Kagan but from Trump himself, along with his constitutionally illiterate enablers, that this is just the kind of abuse of power they contemplate in a second Trump term.”

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None of this has been subtle, or stealthy. As JVL wrote yesterday: “Trump has decided that his authoritarianism isn’t a football that needs to be hidden—it’s his special sauce.”

Here are some things Trump has said about his intentions for his second term:

On “terminating” the Constitution:

Do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution . . . Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections! [bold added]

—December 4, 2022

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On using the DoJ against his political enemies

“They have done something that allows the next party … if I happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them.’ They’d be out of business. They’d be out of the election.”

—November 9, 2023

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And his inner circle is listening to their master’s voice:

A Donald Trump ally who worked in his Justice Department said Tuesday that if the former president is elected again, his administration will retaliate against people in the media “criminally or civilly.”

Kash Patel, who was also chief of staff in the Defense Department and held a role on the National Security Council, made the comment on Steve Bannon’s podcast. He said that, in a second Trump administration, “We will go out and find the conspirators not just in government, but in the media,” over the 2020 election, which Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

Axios provided a peak at what a Trump 2.0 administration might look like. Think Vice President Tucker Carlson, Attorney General Stephen Miller, White House Chief of Staff Steve Bannon, FBI or CIA director Kash Patel, Secretary of State Ric Grenell.

In other words, a veritable Fyre Festival of Authoritarianism and Hilarity. By now we know the pattern:

• It’s a joke. He didn’t mean it. LOL.

• Okay, he meant it, but we shouldn’t take it seriously.

• You are the ones with the TDS!

• Damn right, he meant it.

• Let’s go!

Make sure you tip your waitresses because we’re here all week.

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Kevin exits with a Big FU

On Thursday’s podcast, a morning-after breakdown of the GOP debate — and some serious Chris Christie love, Kevin’s humiliation, Liz’s 3rd party musings, and a debate over The Person of the Year. A.B. Stoddard joins me.

You can listen to the whole thing here. Or watch us on YouTube.

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New poll illustrates the devolution of the GOP… and the threat of violence

A fascinating new poll from UMass Amherst highlights the dramatic gap between former GOP members of Congress — many of whom have been driven into exile — and the party’s rank-and-file base.

“Nearly 300 Former Members responded to the survey, with close to a 50/50 split of Democrats and Republicans, and with service years spanning from 1962 to 2022.”

Some of the highlights:

100% of Democrats and 83% of Republicans who responded believe that Biden’s election in 2020 was legitimate. This is in stark contrast to survey results from the general voting population, in which 90% of Democrats and only 25% of Republicans believe the 2020 election was valid.

On Trump’s threats to democracy:

The responses of Former Members continue to differ from those of the general electorate on perceptions of Trump’s impact on American Democracy.

89% of Democratic Former Members and 64% of Republican Former Members believe Trump’s efforts to claim he won the 2020 election threaten our nation’s democracy. Comparatively, in America’s general voting-age population, 78% of Democrats and 18% of Republicans feel the same way.

On the rising threat of violence:

The poll found that 84% of the former members of Congress said they were concerned about the possibility of violence related to the 2024 presidential election, including 74% of Republicans and 94% of Democrats surveyed.

Another unnerving finding is a recent increase in the number and frequency of threats to members of Congress and their families during their time in office: 47% of respondents indicated that they receive threats at least somewhat frequently, 49% of Republicans and 46% of Democrats. However, for former members of Congress who are female or a racial minority, that number increases to 69%. The group surveyed also reported an uptick in the number of threats against members of their congressional staff.

“While these results are extremely upsetting, it’s exactly why we felt conducting this survey was so important,” says Pete Weichlein, chief executive officer of FMC, a non-advocacy, nonpartisan group founded in 1970 and chartered by Congress in 1983. “Political tension in our country is clearly coming to a boiling point, and awareness of these findings may be the first step to combatting it.”

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Quick Hits

1. Cynical, Nasty, and Nuts

What Will Saletan saw at Wednesday’s GOP debate:

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY’S INSANITY leaves a big hole in this country. When progressives jerk their knees on one issue or another—deriding religious parents, overdoing COVID restrictions, calling every border-control policy racist—I’d like to hear alternative ideas from a sane conservative party. Instead, what we have is an extremist, authoritarian party in which—as Kelly essentially acknowledged—the one presidential candidate who tells the truth and adheres to principle has no chance of being nominated.

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2. To Bear Witness to Evil

Cathy Young writes in The Bulwark that “Dwight Eisenhower understood why we must preserve memories of atrocities—a duty still painfully with us today.”

EISENHOWER AND THE HOLOCAUST DEALS PRIMARILY with the events of almost eight decades ago, yet it touches on many issues that are startlingly pertinent to our own time, from collective responsibility for crimes committed by authoritarian and totalitarian regimes to the pernicious role of anti-immigrant biases in abandoning the victims of such regimes to a terrible fate. But one theme is particularly central and particularly topical: the need to confront and document atrocities, and to preempt and counteract the temptation to write off those atrocities as “propaganda” or exaggeration.

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3. How Scared Should We Be?

Very. Tim Miller’s latest Not My Party:

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