Like everything else about Donald Trump, his hiring decisions are often the result of his unbridled narcissism. The women who work most closely with Trump are required to meet the sole criterion of being sexually attractive to him, and often possess little-to-no previous experience in the roles they are assigned.
The men in his employ must also meet certain physical criteria. They are required to look like they “came from central casting.” He wants generals to look like George Patton, his personal lackeys to be square jawed and servile, and his cabinet members to be clean shaven and buttoned down. Oh, and he has a strong preference for surrounding himself with Caucasian men who address him, exclusively, as “Sir.”
The only other requirements for landing a spot near Trump are that the employee must be slavishly adoring and willing to break the law.
Jared Kushner, who was elevated to the position of special envoy to the Middle East during the Trump presidency, having not a scintilla of previous experience in government service or diplomacy, is a prime example. His loyalty to Trump and his eagerness to stuff his own pockets with billions from the Saudis appear to have been his only qualifications.
Moreover, to this day, not a single person on Earth knows what Ivanka Trump did in her father’s administration, apart from dressing to the nines and strutting like a runway model each day as she traversed the distance between her limousine and the White House.
Meanwhile, Trump has repeatedly made it clear that he thinks his namesake, Donald Junior, is a dunce. Junior is the frequent recipient of his father’s ire, and Trump never hesitates to savage him in front of whomever might be present at the moment. Nevertheless, Junior’s incompetence was no barrier to him being able to select his father’s running mate: Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, a puffy, scruffy misogynist who may be the least qualified individual ever to be selected as a presidential running mate.
But hey, he is a friend of Don Junior. Apparently, that is more than enough to establish his bona fides. Besides, Trump has assured us that nobody cares about his running mate anyway; his base only cares about seeing Trump’s name at the top of the ticket. Still, it seems impossible that Trump has not yet registered what an electoral liability he invited into his tent.
Sarah Palin notwithstanding, J.D. Vance may be the worst candidate in vice presidential history. The Republican convention had not even concluded before sound bites and footage from previous Vance interviews began to emerge, and by the time the balloons dropped from the ceiling at Fiserv Stadium in Milwaukee, the airwaves were flooded with Vance’s previous statements.
This was how I learned that Vance thinks I am a sociopathic, childless cat lady who should have fewer voting rights, and pay higher taxes, for the crime of neglecting to give birth. Additionally, I learned that raising stepchildren does not mitigate your failure to give birth to your own. This means that Kamala Harris is a sociopathic, childless cat lady as well.
Vance is also of the opinion that there should be a nation-wide abortion ban with no exceptions for rape or incest. And speaking of rape and incest, Vance thinks that battered women should remain in their abusive marriages and continue to produce children for their abusers.
Since becoming Trump’s running mate, Vance has attempted to stalk Kamala Harris on an airport tarmac and has accused her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, of “stolen valor” because months after honorably retiring from his 24-year career in the National Guard, his former unit deployed to Iraq. The implication was that Walz retired in order to avoid combat.
Vance somehow failed to mention that Walz had previously deployed to Italy and Turkey to support Operation Enduring Freedom with the other members of his National Guard artillery unit, or that he retired from military service in 2005 to focus on his first run for Congress, where he went on to advocate, successfully, for increased mental-health services for veterans.
Vance also failed to mention the phantom “bone spurs” that allowed Donald Trump to successfully dodge the Vietnam draft, or that Trump has referred to slain soldiers as “suckers and losers”; that he despises veterans like John McCain who were abused and tortured as prisoners of war; and that the sight of disabled veterans makes him sick.
Vance himself deployed to Iraq during his brief stint in the Marines, where he sat in an air-conditioned tent on a military base writing public relations memos. Although he had no combat involvement whatsoever, he seems to believe that typing PR copy in Iraq was his “Apocalypse Now” moment.
Tim Walz served a total of 24 years in the military. J.D. Vance served a total of four: 3.5 years at a military base in Cherry Point, N.C., where he worked as a media relations officer, and six months typing memos at Al Asad air base. That air-conditioned tent can now be recast as a glass house from which J.D. Vance should avoid throwing stones.
Vance has wasted no time insulting the press corps who have been given the unfortunate assignment of covering him during the campaign. When one reporter asked him what gave him joy, he leap-frogged over the opportunity to say something reasonable like, “my wife and children bring me joy,” or “being a public servant brings me joy,” or “running for office with Donald Trump brings me joy.” Instead, he called the question “stupid.”
When asked by another reporter why people in Wisconsin might like to have a beer with him, he could have said, “Because I’m a fun-loving guy and a people person,” or, “Because I like discussing politics with regular working folks and hearing about their concerns.”
Instead, he said, “Well, I guess they’d want to have a beer with me because I like to drink beer.”
It is unclear, at this point, how the wordsmith who wrote a best-selling memoir about his Appalachian childhood could be so completely undone by the simplest of questions.
While his running mate stews and fumes at Mar-a-Lago, Vance is flying all over the country as Trump’s proxy. His awkward, sweaty, surly appearances seem to be just what Trump wants, for reasons that defy logic. Trump is perfectly capable of making his own offensive remarks, so he certainly does not need any help from Vance in that department. He is also more than capable of blathering incoherently, so he does not need Vance for that, either. As for lying, compared to Trump, Vance is a rank amateur.
But there Vance is, flying solo and blowing easy opportunities to make himself sound like he is qualified in any way to be the vice president of the United States.
And this is why you should never hire your children’s friends.
