Things You Didn’t Know About J.D. Vance

How the former atheist has shat on evangelicals and more

July 16: Trump’s #2 … GOP abortion fight aborted … Why Trump document ruling is a win … Biden says “bullseye” remark was a mistake …

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Sen. J.D. Vance and some of his choice quotes about Donald Trump, courtesy of Fox on some day I wasn’t able to nail down. (Screengrab / Twitter.)

To complement his own background as a wealthy Wharton graduate, former Pres. Donald Trump yesterday chose as his running mate another relatable man of the people: former Yale Law Review editor and venture capitalist J.D. Vance.

Trump got elected despite because he had zero years of experience in government. Given how his presidency went, it’s mathematically possible that his government-experience odometer actually ran backwards into negative territory. Vance, meanwhile, has a whopping 1.5 years of experience, having first served in office when he became an Ohio senator in January 2023. The man first worked in government last year.

Which means that, if we’re rounding up, together they have a whole entire six years of experience running country things. Of course, that’s an asset in MAGA ideology, where a dude’s fee fees are all that matter and empiricism is a bad word not just because it’s hard to pronounce.

Hilariously, in making this choice, Trump has been conned by a con man who was an absolute savage critic of Trump back in 2016. Politico has a great piece on how Vance manipulated his way into the gig. My favorite bit is when Donald Trump, Jr., a Vance bro-buddy, hands Pater an article about Vance’s rival Gov. Doug Burgum (R-ND) getting endorsed for the vice-presidential pick by Karl Rove. 

Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for the establishment Republicans who thought the tiger they were riding wouldn’t eat them.

Of course, Democrats understandably will turn hours and hours of Vance shitting on Trump into fabulous campaign ads, which will preach beautifully to the choir. But in MAGA land, as in Trump’s eyes, Vance’s former apostasy is a feature, not a bug.

Someone who believed in Trump all the way is a sucker, someone who got conned. Vance, on the other hand, saw Trump for what he is — and then capitulated. In MAGA eyes that makes him not weak or unprincipled but smart and unprincipled.

Vance demonstrated a willingness to compromise core beliefs in return for a modicum of power — look ma, I’m the junior senator from Ohio! What greater qualification could a simulacram of a man hold for the Trump vice presidency?

Vance is a slap in the face to Trump’s true base: Evangelical Christians. Whether they know it or not. Luckily for Trump, his true base is a fan of fetishistic violence and in response to his past slaps in the face have responded reliably with Thank You Sir May I Have Another.

I dove a little bit into Vance’s religious background, because who the fuck else will? Turns out, less than 15 years ago, Vance was an atheist. (By my count that means Vance has done complete 180s on two gods.)

But don’t assume that makes Vance a fake Christian in the Trumpian vein. Vance speaks in depth, at length, and in personal terms about what religion means to him. And his religion is a subject that merits substantive exploration¹, with political landmines for both sides.

In a 2016 interview, for instance, Vance disparages the Christianity in the region where he grew up, Appalachian Ohio.

“[F]or at least a fair number of people in these areas, Christian faith isn’t motivating their behavior. It’s just another identifier. They listen to country music, live in a rural area, like to fish, and they’re also Christians.”

And try to imagine Pres. Joe Biden or Vice Pres. Kamala Harris dropping this bomb about conservative evangelical Christianity:

“The kind of conservative, evangelical Christianity I practiced encourages a cultural paranoia where you don’t trust and want to withdraw from a lot of parts of the world. …I eventually got to the point where I was like, ‘Well, if I can’t believe in the Big Bang Theory and be a good Christian, then maybe I’m not a good Christian.’”

Bazinga! Vance openly rejects the Biblical lie that the universe is almost as old as Biden! And he shits on conservative evangelical Protestantism again as less well-suited than competing sects for navigating This Crazy Modern World.

“[A] lot of the isolating pressures I experienced as a young, conservative, evangelical Protestant aren’t present for Catholics and Mormons. Both of those faiths are very intense about the moral rules they want their followers to follow, but they’re also engaged not just with modern science but with the modern world. Catholics and Mormons seem to be much better at figuring out how to practice their faith in a multicultural world. My sense is that it’s because there aren’t those isolating pressures. They don’t feel like they had to choose between the world and their faith. They can influence the world through their faith.”

He’s also said some people voted for Trump because racism. So, yeah, he’s gonna keep the campaign-ad editors busy.

So how did Vance go from atheist to Christian? It wasn’t the godless enclaves of Ohio, where, he says, poor people lacked churches. It was the secular elite Ivy-shrouded halls of Yale Law School, where he was exposed to a range — nay, a diversity — of different religious backgrounds.

“All of my close friends growing up were all really religious but, with the exception of one of us, we all considered ourselves nonreligious by age 25. At Yale, I was exposed to faith groups in which that didn’t seem to be happening.”

Vance closes that interview by saying he didn’t belong to a particular denomination, but was considering giving Catholicism a whirl. He only converted in 2019, and gave another interview about his new religion.

“I hope my faith makes me more compassionate and to identify with people who are struggling. But my politics have been pretty consistent over the past few years. I think the Republican Party has been too long a partnership between social conservatives and market libertarians, and I don’t think social conservatives have benefited too much from that partnership. Part of social conservatism’s challenge for viability in the 21st century is that it can’t just be about issues like abortion, but it has to have a broader vision of political economy, and the common good.”

Quick sidebar: Politico’s nifty look at how Vance vanced his way into Trump’s heart suggests it was pure calculation. Vance methodically worked on his shortcomings: Upping his fundraising game by tapping his Silicon Valley bros; vigorously defending Trump on TV a lot with a skillful blend of populist appeal and faux sophistication; wooing Don Jr., Tucker Carlson, and Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk.)

In that context, here’s Vance again from 2019:

“[B]eing in public life is in part a popularity contest. When you’re trying to do things that make you liked by as many people as possible, you’re not likely to do things that are consistent with the teachings of the Catholic Church.”

Regardless of how willing Vance has been to do things inconsistent with his religion, you can’t deny he is — or at least was — a thoughtful guy. And religiously speaking not off-putting to most of America. But that was 2019.

More recently, Warren Throckmorton surfaced something about Vance you likely won’t see elsewhere. Throckmorton is an evangelical writer who’s debunked theocratic claims about the founding fathers and I’ve interviewed him and quoted him about his familiarity with The Fellowship Foundation, aka The Family, and its right-wing work around the world.

Throckmorton wrote last night about a 2022 conference Vance attended. Remember what Vance said about Catholics influencing the world through their faith? Well, it’s not clear to what extent Vance shared the views of the conference organizers, but it was a gathering of Catholic integralists, Christian nationalists who want government to run according to Biblical precepts. Their Biblical precepts.

That said, as Throckmorton notes, Vance is not a hard-liner on all things Catholic. Just this month, Vance clarified that he’s okay with mifepristone, the abortion pill. Unlike God. But just like Trump.

MORE TIDBITS Vance’s wife Usha is the daughter of immigrants from India. Usha Vance is a lawyer who has clerked for then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. That’s for all you conspiracy-minded folks to have fun with today! (h/t) 

GOP Abortion Foes Abort Their Abortion Fight

The selection of Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), who’s soft on mifepristone, wasn’t the only fail for the enemies of reproductive rights yesterday.

Thanks to Saturday’s attempted earsassination of former Pres. Donald Trump, a planned floor fight to muscle up the GOP’s abortion platform was shot down yesterday, and not just nicked by shrapnel.

Politico reports that almost two dozen members of the Republican National Committee (RNC) platform committee were considering forcing a vote on their abortion plank the way they want to force people with uteruses to carry fetuses to term. One of those members is Family Research Council President Tony Perkins.

Perkins told Politico it’s not that they’re giving up, just that the timing sucks. What with bang bang pop pop shoe shoe fight fight and all. So they might not push the issue now, but apparently they’re hoping for a late-term abortion of the party’s abortion platform. Or they just love Trump so much that they’ve opted to join the League of Wanton Baby Killers.

The anti-choice platform members do take some solace from the existing RNC platform. Although it stops short of endorsing a full-on national ban, it sets the predicate for one by hinting at the ridiculous notion of 14th Amendment personhood rights for clumps of cells no bigger than a single Dippin’ Dot™.

Trump Stolen Documents Case Dismissed

Yesterday’s dismissal of The Case of the Stolen Government Documents led to universal despair and lamentations from the left. But I took a different perspective on it. As I do. Seems to me like this is the best possible outcome.

Judge Aileen Cannon yesterday dismissed the case, ruling that the guy who brought it to her, special counsel Jack Smith, wasn’t allowed to do that because he wasn’t appointed to his position by Congress or Pres. Joe Biden or Jesus.

Legal whiz Joyce Vance (no relation, I’m assuming…?!?) has an exhaustive run-down of Cannon’s ruling and the possible dominos standing behind it. She leads with the most funnest factoid here, that all eight federal judges who have ruled on the constitutionality of special counsels before Cannon have been cool with it.

Vance follows the paper trail from Article II of the Constitution, which lets Congress give appointment power to department heads, and then to 28 United States Code § 533(4), in which Congress did just that. One might say that appointing officers is canon!

And last night, the Justice Department gave Smith the okay to appeal Cannon’s non-canonical ruling. And Smith’s spokesperson said he’s a’gonna do just that.

But, but…then doesn’t it go to the :::jump-scare theme::: Supreme Court? It does!

And in her ruling, Cannon blows a big wet kiss at Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote an opinion earlier this year saying that Trump’s election-stealing case should have been dismissed for the same reason: Because special counsels violate the made-up Constitution.

But as was pointed out by Vance — the Joyce one, not the J.D. one — none of the other justices, not even the five other members of the January Six, agreed with Thomas. No one signed on to his adorable little Constitutional fanfic. In other words, the Supreme Court has already had a chance to rule on this and said, paraphrasing, grow the fuck up.

Now, will this delay the trial? Yep! But not more effectively than Cannon has been already. By jumping the gun with her dismissal, Cannon handed Smith cause to take her whole judgification-ness to the Eleventh Circuit, which is well-versed in dispensing with Cannon’s incompetence in short order.

Smith’s appeal now opens the door for the Eleventh Circuit to give the case to another judge entirely, an option they didn’t have until Cannon gave Smith cause.

SIDEBAR The New York Times has an interesting look at Cannon’s judgeness (gift link). She’s described as slow, and defensive about it. And while it’s mostly been ascribed to her desire to help Trump drag his feet on the legal process, I suspect more is at work here.

I suspect part of the reason she’s so slow — and not just on Trump shit — is that she’s not good at judging and needs help with basic shit, help that counsel provides in the manymany hearings she holds. At one point in the case, a prosecutor on Smith’s team complained about how long shit was taking.

“I can assure you that in the background there is a great deal of judicial work going on,” Cannon said (“snapped,” according to the Times). “So while it may not appear on the surface that anything is happening, there is a ton of work being done.”

Which is possible! And that ton of work might very well be…learning.

We were never going to get a verdict in this case before Election Day. But now there’s a chance Smith might actually win it. Someday.

SIDEBAR Some good, high-altitude thoughts on politics and the judiciary, from smart guy and former colleague Matthew Sheffield.

Meet Day 2 of Your Republican National Convention, America!

Time for more highlights from the Republican National Convention! The online schedule shows we’ve got more screenings of the new movie “REAGAN” — starring former movie stars Dennis Quaid and John Voight — about the wacky adventures of the party’s once-most-popular president, who’s now largely ignored.

Here’s a scary one! There’s a panel…or something…on Standing Up for Our Constitutional Rights in the 2024 Election. Now, in light of Saturday’s attack on former Pres. Donald Trump by an angry Teleprompter shard, you might think that this event would be about fighting in court or in the public sphere. Nope, it’s about justifying gun violence!

The panel features Trump campaign guy Chris LaCivita “& key pro 2A [Second Amendment] lawmakers.” [Emphasis added for scariness.] And it’s sponsored by the U.S. Concealed Carry Association. That’s right, three days after a 20-year-old used Dad’s rifle to kill a Trump-loving firefighter, the Republican National Convention is holding a panel on using guns to defend the Constitution…as part of a convention where guns aren’t allowed.

Oh, hey, more woke RNC today! The Diversity crowd is holding an event called “The New Mavericks: Honoring Black Delegates & Alternates,” even though the right-wing Supreme Court has outlawed honoring Black Anythings. and the “I Love New York Party” is being sponsored by New York State Young Republicans who haven’t gotten the RNC’s “We Love to Hate New York” memo.

Today’s official theme on the main stage is Make America Safe Once Again, presumably a celebration of the record-low crime numbers we’re seeing in most of the country except for the lost, benighted hell pockets of neglected, underfunded, hopeless red states.

For last night’s theme of Moneygrubbing, the Republican Party offered few specifics. Inflation will come down because Pres. Joe Biden will be gone. Small business growth will rebound from its current, uh, massive spike:

And it’s not just applications, nitpicky smart guy. Startups are at their highest levels in 30 years:

Does Biden deserve the credit for that? Who knows! But the GOP doesn’t have a better theory. It’s all fee-fees! How do we know? Because they said so on stage last night.

As Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) boo-hooed, “Tonight, America, the land of opportunity, just doesn’t feel like that anymore.” In other words, America can’t succeed by any metric when a Democrat is in charge because when a Democrat’s in charge, Republicans don’t feel good.

Six Quickies

• Remember when that guy tried to kill former Pres. Donald Trump…’s ear? Feels like a million years ago already, right? We’ll get flashbacks all week, and in campaign iconography, but with the FBI coming up with bupkis on motive, this may be moving into footnote territory even faster than I expected.

• Pres. Joe Biden yesterday endorsed capping corporate rental hikes at 5% annually. Biden asked Congress to send him legislation denying some tax benefits to corporations that fail to comply with that cap, instead of just issuing an executive order authorizing the lawful execution of corporate landlords, which the Supreme Court says he can now do.

• Pres. Joe Biden correctly said last night that it was a mistake to use the word “bullseye” when talking about former Pres. Donald Trump a week or so ago. He also correctly said that Trump says much worse shit than that and does, in fact, represent a threat to democratic norms, institutions, and individuals upholding them.

• Popular Information has a nice, handy roundup of all some of the violent political rhetoric Republican officials and leaders have apologized not apologized for.

• I’m still seeing dribs and drabs of folks saying Pres. Joe Biden should step aside. As I’ve said and will keep saying, this is helpful. This is democratic. If Biden’s critics/skeptics succeed in replacing him as the nominee, there’s a good chance his replacement, likely Vice Pres. Kamala Harris, will do as well or better against former Pres. Donald Trump. If Biden defeats his critics/skeptics, he, too, goes into the race stronger than before. Democracy = win/win.

• When the face of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) appeared on the big screen of the Republican National Convention yesterday, the delegates booed him. Turns out Republicans can unite us!

TCB

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Go get ‘em, kids.

Note: This edition of TFN originally had a Jurassic Park gif, which I’ve replaced with a War Games gif because the original had a rifle in it. Which, y’know, not cool. Sorry about the oversight.

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