Tag: J. D. Vance

To Christian Nationalists, Even Hitler Was Forgiven

Oct 29

Evil on Steroids

To be clear, when we say “Trump,” understand we’re talking about the Heritage Foundation’s agenda. Trump and his tigers, elephants, and giraffes are not the ones steering this country, although it’s evident he’s enjoying the cruelty. The infrastructure behind him—ideological, financial, and operational—is what’s actually in control.

Elon Musk and the DOGE boys served as the slash-and-burn team, generating the chaos and distraction required for the early stages of Project 2025 to move forward. Trump is simply the vehicle the Heritage Foundation used to gain power.

Do they really intend to deport all brown immigrants, including birthright citizens? They’re certainly trying; the Supreme Court has the case on its docket. And if they succeed, who will work the agricultural jobs? Well, what happens when millions are unemployed, hungry, and sick? Crime rates increase.

So why the new prisons and camps? To house the “new criminals.” And what happens to those criminals? They become “free labor” in the fields.

The Heritage Foundation and the tech bros are building their own fiefdom. Sound far-fetched? More than 40 million Americans are about to lose their SNAP benefits. 13.8 million have already been laid off under Trump’s administration. The uninsured population could climb to 31 million or more by 2026. And when enhanced ACA subsidies expire on December 31, 2025, premiums are projected to increase 114% for 22 million Americans.

Now add the ridiculous tariffs designed to skyrocket the cost of living, along with every other heinous policy meant to push the American people to the brink of despair.

How will they control all these people? With the “law enforcement” they’ve created to report to the Executive Branch, of course.

The ICE Budget for Weaponry

Puppy-killer Kristi Noem received two luxury jets valued at $200 million, and ICE is flush with cash like a hog at the trough with a $170 billion budget. It’s as if torment and cruelty are now line items in America’s priorities.

In 2019 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spent just $5.7 million on the “small arms” category through October 18; during Trump’s first administration the government averaged about $8.4 million per year. In 2025, ICE has increased that weapons spending by 600 percent. In the last nine months alone, they have spent $71,515,762 on purchases listed as “small arms, ordnance, and ordnance accessories manufacturing.”

Think about that: the MAGA Big Budget Bill made ICE the largest federal law enforcement agency in the nation’s history, with a budget larger than most of the world’s militaries and a 600 percent increase in weapons spending.

This is a domestic enforcement agency—not going to war “over there,” but here: in our streets, against our people.

Blonde and Blue Jesus Forgives Them

I listen to pundits ask, “Why? Why would Republicans give up all their power? Aren’t they concerned about legacy? Why have they abdicated all authority to this Epstein-adjacent convicted felon?”

In short: The GOP has spent more than forty years twisting, remolding, and regurgitating Christian nationalist rhetoric until this moment feels like their long-awaited “crusade.” In their worldview, all one has to do is believe that a white Jesus was the Son of God—and their eternal elevator will come equipped with an “up” button.

Yes, Jesus is their get-out-of-Hell-free card—because in their version of Christianity even Hitler is forgiven. And what is “legacy” when the people destroying history are the ones holding the pen—what does it even mean to be on “the right side” of it?

“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” – George Orwell, 1984

The Republican Party of fiscal responsibility and rule of law is dead. In its place stands a movement that made a deal with the devil: fall in line behind Trump and his whims, or be destroyed in a primary. And as we’ve seen over the past year with Elon Musk, the DOGE boys, and the election data, it’s no longer just the voters deciding who wins—at least not in elections large enough to cross a certain vote-count threshold.

Their recreational depravity is evil on steroids, and I feel it every time I scroll the news or check on a friend who’s barely hanging on. You probably feel it too. Or you’re trying not to. We watch as Trump’s sycophants hack away at the agencies that keep us alive, leaving them bleeding and gasping for air.

This is how they break the spirit of the American people.

To act as if this is just “Trump being Trump” is to underestimate their underlying agenda.

“Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?” Trump to former SECDEF Mark Esper in 2020.

This quote is disturbing, but it’s 2025 and we’re nowhere near the civil unrest of the 2020 Floyd protests—unless they’re able to create it.

The Manufactured Flashpoint

I think about the families in North Carolina—maybe you do too. One storm. One night. And suddenly they’re living under a tarp in the hills, shivering, staring at the mud where their home used to be. They waited for FEMA. They prayed for FEMA. And then came the denial. Trump said no. Just… no. No aid. No lifeline. No reason. Try telling a child huddled beside you that the government of the richest nation on earth just shrugged. DESPAIR.

Or the mother who did everything right—every well-check, every vaccine—until the lies and poison from RFK Jr. made her second-guess what she once trusted. Now she sits beside a hospital bed, watching her child fight a disease we had already beaten. She carries the guilt. Her child carries the consequences. HOPELESSNESS.

Then there are the farmers who voted for Trump with their full chest, now watching as the slashing of USAID and the illogical punitive tariffs decimate their businesses. Meanwhile, Trump handed Argentina a $40 billion bailout, cut a deal to purchase their beef, and in return Argentina struck new agreements to sell soybeans to countries that once bought from U.S. suppliers. All as JD Vance and his AcreTrader investors scour the country for farms on life support, ready to swoop in and rob hardworking American families of what they spent generations building. ANGUISH.

And then there’s the veteran I can’t stop picturing—perhaps because I am one, and this visual occupies space in my brain and heart that I can’t turn off. It’s reality for too many. Trump’s tariffs were supposed to help the economy and the American people; that’s what they were told. Instead, prices exploded. Jobs disappeared. The VA slashed support. Some were hit twice, never realizing that “eliminating DEI” also meant eliminating programs that kept women in the workforce. Now they stare at stacks of bills no one with PTSD should ever have to face. They’re a month away from losing their home, and SNAP benefits are days away from a hold-status until the government reopens.

An unnecessary government shutdown that could have been avoided if Speaker Johnson would just release the Epstein files. They’re confused and crushed. Fox is on in the background, reporting that Trump is building a $300 million ballroom. For who? The billionaires? The oligarchs? RAGE.

Bannon’s Firehose of Maximum Outrage

And now we have the beginnings of the uprising that Putin, Trump, Steve Bannon, the weak-ass tech bros with their pre-built bunkers, and the Project 2025 Nazis have been engineering—by slashing and burning the people’s lifelines.

This is the architecture of despair:

Watching in horror as a corrupt Supreme Court legitimized race as a factor to remove Black and Brown people from our streets.
Knowing that Democrats signed off on the Laken Riley Act with human rights violations baked in—now we question all politicians.
Trump canceling 94 million pounds of food aid to our food banks in the spring.
A looming SNAP halt that will hit over 40 million households, even as a $5 billion surplus sits unused—money we know will not be spent to feed families this Thanksgiving.
Rural schools hurting after DOE cuts, as vouchers go to the wealthy.
Food borne illnesses on the rise as RFK Jr. guts the agencies that protect the public—literally killing people.
The Medicaid cuts we know are coming as the wealthy continue to fiscally rape the working class.
Sexual assault protections rolled back—for women in the military, on college campuses, and in corporations that choose to embrace Trump and Hegseth’s pre–women’s rights mindset.
Military bases renamed after Confederate traitors, using random soldiers with matching names to stoke racial division.
Funding slashed for HBCUs and for health research programs serving Black women—a reminder that no matter the progress, it can always be snatched away. The boot will always be on the neck. There can never be trust. Ever.
Jackie Kennedy’s Rose Garden ripped out for a tacky patio to host criminals and pedophiles.
The East Wing of the people’s White House reduced to rubble for a 90,000-square-foot ballroom for a puny little man who can’t even dance.

He tore down the fucking White House—our White House.

It’s the methodical destruction of our sacred institutions and the places we turn when we are scared, sick, or desperate. It is the breaking of the American spine by men drunk on unearned power, men who enjoy watching people crawl.

And that is why $170 billion to ICE matters. Because once you break people, you need an army to control the pieces. An army they plan to have in place by the spring, before the midterms.

Walz versus Vance on CBS in VP Debate on 10/1/2024

By Connie Wilson

On October 2, 2024

In Editorial, Essays on Politics: Best Political Essays & Ideology, News, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Politics, Television

J.D. Vance and Tim Walz debated on 10/1/2024 as Vice Presidential candidates on CBS.

I just watched the Vice Presidential debate between J.D. Vance and Tim Walz.The Talking Heads are suggesting that Walz may have been “in over his head” in debating the slick and chameleon-like Vance, who seems to have made a career of being all things to all people. Vance described Donald J. Trump as “America’s Hitler” in e-mail pronouncements of yore and severely criticized Trump’s performance in office, but tonight he was all in on supporting DJT.

Most people consider it a situation where the more experienced debater (Vance) performed better on style, but Walz did just as well (a tie) on substance. Vance’s statements were often duplicitous and that of a chameleon who takes the position that he says what he thinks people want to hear. It reminded me of the recent Supreme Court candidates who answered Congress the way they thought would win them lifetime seats on the Court and then went ahead and did exactly what they planned to do all along, overturn Roe v. Wade.

I did my usual copious note-taking. I want to resurrect a couple of moments in the debate that stood out to me, just as the “eating dogs and cats” remarks in the last Harris/DJT debate stood out.

THE 2 WORST MOMENTS: WALZ & VANCE

VANCE

J.D. Vance (GOP candidate for VP) and eyeliner.

For me, the worst moment from J.D. Vance was his failure to admit that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. As Tim Walz said,“A President’s words matter. It is not right to deny what happened. 2020 was the first time that a President tried to overturn the peaceful transition of power. The winner has got to be the winner.” Walz called it “a damning non-answer.” He was right.

WALZ

For Governor Walz of Minnesota, his weakest moment was when he was called out on having said that he had been present in China during Tiananmen Square. Rather than wade into that murky water and admit that he misspoke or was caught in a situation that caused Brian Williams to be removed from his post as chief anchor (and end up much less visible on our TV screens), he gave an answer that David Axelrod said would have been more comprehensible if given in Chinese.[When Vance at the outset after Question #1 was cornered, rather than answer the very first question that he was asked about Iran, he dodged and weaved and gave us 2 minutes about himself without answering the initial question.]

Tim Walz, Governor of Minnesota and Democratic candidate for Vice President on 10/1/2024.

In the summer of ’89 Walz traveled to China, he told us. He also told us that he started a program to take kids to China. “My community knows who I am. I’ve tried to do the best job I can. I was elected to Congress 12 times. Governor of Minnesota twice. To make sure that I make this right. (*Wasn’t the question about whether he was at Tiananmen Square protests? So far Walz hasn’t explained the discrepancy.)

ABORTION

Vance said he “never supported a national ban,” a lie, because he DID support a national abortion ban. In 2022 in an interview when he was running for the Senate he said, “I certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally.” On his website, he said he was “100% pro-life” and GOP ” has got to earn people’s trust back.” Tonight, he talked about how the GOP needed to “reach out,” which made no sense at all. This “softening” of his intractable anti-abortion stance was part of the plan to try to make DJT seem more “sane” and reasonable.

Here are a few lines that struck me beyond the ones mentioned above:

Walz on the Middle East and nuclear weapons: “Iran is closer to a nuclear weapon because Donald Trump nixed the plan we had and left nothing in its place.”

Walz on Climate Change and our changing weather patterns (especially as they apply to farmers): “Our #1 export cannot be topsoil from these massive storms.”

Walz on statements that foster divisiveness: “This is what happens when you don’t want to solve it. The remarks about eating cats and dogs vilified a large number of people in Springfield, Ohio, who were in the country legally. The Governor had to send National Guard to escort first graders to school.”

I also enjoyed Walz’s response, “Just mind your own business. Things worked best when Roe v. Wade was the law.” Another good one-liner was when Walz gave an incredulous response to DJT’s “I have a concept of a plan” response about an overhaul of the Affordable Care Act that he now has had 9 and 1/2 years to develop. Walz said, ““I have a concept of a plan. That cracked me up. I have a fourth grader who wouldn’t have given me that.”

Margaret Brennan (“Face the Nation”) who moderated along with Norah O’Donnell on CBS.

After the scripture quote from Matthew (”What we do unto the least of our brethren,” etc.) by Walz, Vance commandeered the time and ranted on virtually uninterruptedly. The female moderators (Nora O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan on CBS) finally cut his mike. You go, Girls! Vance’s Ivy League polish showed; the man’s not a dummy. The split screen favored him, not Walz, even though Walz is without a doubt the more genuine and truthful of the two.

About the Democratic party: WALZ – “We’re pro women. We’re pro freedom. We are pro freedom for women to make their own choices.” He cited the Democratic Party’s $6,000 child tax credit and Amber Thurman, who was made to drive 600 miles to get health care in North Carolina.

Two Big Lies that Vance made were to say that DJT gave up power peacefully and that DJT saved Obamacare. Vance’s nose must have grown a foot, at least, after those remarks.

One good thing that everyone seemed to appreciate was the relative civility of the debate, “like the old days.” However, when one realizes that it was Vance’s Master Plan to lie to the public, just as happened with the testimony of the Supreme Court appointees who then went ahead to do what they had said, under oath, they would not do re Roe v. Wade, well—–

Chris Christie: GOP Savior or GOP Gadfly?

By Connie Wilson

On June 22, 2023

In Editorial, Essays on Politics: Best Political Essays & Ideology, News, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Politics, Television

Christie in 2022

Frank Bruni is a contributing Opinion writer who was on the staff of The Times for more than 25 years. He wrote a June 21^st opinion about Chris Christie’s recent remarks during his CNN Town Hall appearance. Mr. Bruni found Christie’s remarks as refreshing and as necessary as I did, in watching this appearance.

I had also just completed reading Margaret Haberman’s book on Donald J. Trump. Haberman, the New York Times writer assigned to cover Trump over decades, interviewed hundreds of personal friends of DJT and related that Christie was very definitely trying to snag the VP nomination for himself during 2016.

Most of us who watched Mr. Christie during his Sunday morning talk show appearances know that he was the politician tapped to “prep” Donald J. Trump for debates during his run, although DJT was not a willing student at all times. One of the more startling facts that Haberman rehashed was how Trump, himself, kept Christie wondering about who would ultimately be his running mate. The three finalists were said to be Pence, Christie and Newt Gingrich. Trump called up the Indiana Senator and told him to fly out for the announcement, and Christie got wind of the Pence family’s arrival in Teterboro, N.J. It was not a happy conversation when Christie realized that Trump had been jacking him around for literally months, I’m sure.

Here’s what Frank Bruni had to say: “Chris Christie made a complete fool of himself back in 2016, fan-dancing obsequiously around Donald Trump, angling for a crucial role in his administration, nattering on about their friendship, pretending or possibly even convincing himself that Trump could restrain his ego, check his nastiness, suspend his grift and, well, serve America. But then Christie, a former two-term governor of New Jersey, had plenty of company. And he never did style himself as a saint.

It’s all water under the George Washington Bridge now. The Chris Christie of the current moment is magnificent. I don’t mean magnificent as in, “He’s going to win the Republican presidential nomination.” I don’t mean I am rooting for a Christie presidency and regard him as the country’s possible saviour.

But what he’s doing in this Republican primary contest is very, very important. It also couldn’t be more emotionally gratifying to behold. He’s telling the unvarnished truth about Trump, and he’s the only candidate doing that. A former prosecutor, he’s artfully, aggressively and comprehensively making the case against Trump, knocking down all the rationalizations Trump has mustered and all the diversions he has contrived since his 37-count federal indictment.”

In a poll released on Friday by The New Hampshire Journal, Christie had pulled into third place among Republicans in the state, far behind Trump, who had 47 percent of the vote, but not far behind Ron DeSantis, who had just 13. Christie had 9, followed by Mike Pence with 5. That partly reflects Christie’s decision to make his initial stand, so to speak, in New Hampshire. But it also reflects something else: He’s excellent at this.

Christie is to DeSantis what a Roman candle is to a scented votive. He explodes in a riot of color. DeSantis, on his best days, flickers.”

I would like to add that Christie’s performance on that CNN Town Hall, was, indeed, more like a Roman candle than the halting delivery of second place runner Ron DeSantis. I found his one-on-one answers to members of the audience to be spot-on, even when one asked about the infamous Bridgegate controversy that ended his time in New Jersey politics.

My enchantment with Christie’s fireworks makes me a cliché. In an observant and witty analysis in The Atlantic on Monday with the headline “Chris Christie, Liberal Hero,” David Graham inventoried the adoring media coverage Christie has garnered, noting that while there’s zero evidence that Christie could actually win the contest he has entered, “pundits are swooning.” It should be noted here that hard-core GOP voters were less thrilled with Christie’s sudden emergence as one of the few Republicans to let the truth prevail. Many of the most faithful Republicans—up to 70% in one poll—said they would not vote for him.

But the swoon isn’t about Christie’s prospects. It’s about the hugely valuable contrast to other Republican presidential candidates that he’s providing. And about this: The health of American democracy hinges on a reckoning within the Republican Party, and that won’t come from Democrats saying the kinds of things that Christie is now saying. They’ve been doing that for years. It’ll come — if it even can — from the words and warnings of longtime Republicans who know how to get and use the spotlight.

Did you see Christie’s CNN town hall last week? Have you watched or listened to any of his interviews? He’s funny. He’s lively. He’s crisp. And he’s right. Over the past few weeks, he has described Trump’s behavior as “vanity run amok.” Trump himself is “a petulant child.”

At the town hall: “He is voluntarily putting our country through this. If at any point before the search in August of ’22 he had just done what anyone, I suspect, in this audience would have done, which is: said, ‘All right, you’re serious? You’re serving a grand jury subpoena? Let me just give the documents back,’ he wouldn’t have been charged. Wouldn’t have been charged with anything, even though he had kept them for almost a year and a half.”

Other candidates, who prefer not to talk about the charges against Trump, are reportedly worried that his indictment will mean ceaseless chatter about him and extra difficulty promoting their own (muted and muddled) messages. Josh Barro, in his Substack newsletter Very Serious, nailed the absurdity of that, pointing out that Trump’s front-runner status and enormous lead over all of them guarantee that he’ll always monopolize the conversation, indictment or no indictment.

“The Republican nomination campaign cannot — and will not — be about anything but Donald Trump, and the media is not going to invite them on TV to talk about topics other than Donald Trump,” Barro wrote. “So, since they are going to talk about Donald Trump all the time, they had better talk about why he should not be nominated.” Christie is getting invitations and attention because he is doing precisely that. Maybe, just maybe, some of them will take note and wise up.

To the conundrum of what, if Christie qualifies for the Republican primary debates, he’ll do about the required pledge that he support whoever winds up getting the party’s nomination, he has apparently found a solution that’s suited to Republicans’ willful and nihilistic captivity to Trump, the stupidity of the pledge and the stakes of the race: He’ll sign what he must and later act as he pleases.

“I will do what I need to do to be up on that stage to try to save my party and save my democracy,” he told Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday morning.

Let’s pivot from Trump and Trump analogues to Trump sycophants. In The Atlantic, Tom Nichols described how J.D. Vance, who once spoke with such disparaging and devastating accuracy about Trump, did a self-serving about-face in his 2022 Senate race in Ohio and, reprogrammed by that victory, never looked back: “What he once wore as electoral camouflage is now tattooed all over him, in yet another fulfillment of the late Kurt Vonnegut’s warning that, eventually, ‘we are what we pretend to be.’”

Chris Christie, superhero? He has his own supersize vanity. He is arguably playing the only part in the crowded primary field available to him. And those dynamics may have as much to do with his assault on Trump as moral indignation does. Even so, saving his party and country agrees with him.

DeSantis, Pence, Tim Scott, Nikki Haley and other Republican presidential candidates are clearly telling themselves that they can’t do any good down the road if at this intersection they provoke Trump and run afoul of his supporters.

Where have we heard that before? It’s a version of what Christie said to himself in 2016. He now sees the folly of that fable.