Watching that hashtag quickly begin to trend last night on Twitter was satisfying. Its quick proliferation has made it hard to track down exactly who started it, but Mark Hamill certainly made it reach warp speed. If you are not following him on some form of social media, get on that. His virtual light saber is out and cutting down Trump, Vance, and all their sycophants at every turn.
I said Monday that Vance was actually more dangerous than Trump. And make no mistake, Trump IS dangerous. But what we all saw in last night's lie rebuttal - I cannot call it a debate, as all one candidate did was lie, spin, and equivocate, while another practically had a mop on hand to refute and clean it all back up - was why Peter Thiel's puppet is so much worse.
Trump lies like a hippo shits. It's sloppy, haphazard, spewed all about. And the hippo comparison is apt. Male hippos, when fighting, literally spray their poo as far as they can in order mark territory and assert their dominance over their opposition.
We're his opposition. I'll give you a few moments to shower now that you can practically feel it on your skin.
Ready? Good. Trump also has tells like his accordion hands and his trademark "believe me". Either signals that a shit shower is imminent. His lies are so many and so easily disprovable that the media long ago gave up, going from a mindset of Trump is just Trumping to now being bought out by rich Republicans bent on protecting him at all costs.
Vance is a practiced and inveterate liar. As deft with deceit as he is with an eyeliner pencil. Educated, well versed, a shape shifter, and now wholly bought out by Peter Thiel and the Heritage Foundation. Think not? Ask yourself how he made his way onto the ticket of a man he once referred to as "America's Hitler"? This is a man who was solidly anti-Trump, Ivy league educated, married to an Indian American woman. Everything Trump and MAGAland rails against. Yet somehow he was cleaned up, said the right things, ingratiated himself through the right wedge issues, and last night found himself standing opposite Governor Tim Walz.
It was a JD Vance shitshow. No random spewing for him. Rather he serves his shit up with a benign expression and a fork and knife on patterned china. This cartoon is a perfect summation.
In the run up to the 'debate' CBS made it clear they would not be having their moderators do any fact checking - a clear response to the reaction by the Trump campaign as he was fact checked up the saggy ass in his last debate. Public criticism was fast and furious and they then said they would fact check online during the 'debate'. Suuuuuure. We all know how many people have their TVs on with their laptops at the ready to watch simultaneously. Puh-leez. More backlash and then they said ok, ok, the moderators may fact check here and there.
This is such a clear indicator of where journalism now stands. Actually, it doesn't stand. It is flat on the ground, prostrate at the feet of a dementia addled, carrot colored candidate. So evident is their bias, their fear of MAGA backlash, that they have simply become bullhorns for the Trump machine.
He and Vance can rattle off anything, a.n.y.t.h.i.n.g. and they simply amplify it, sanewash it, report on it with gentle wording. Vance is on the record saying they "create stories" to get attention. Lives and safety be damned, he will continue saying Haitians in Ohio are eating people's pets and that they are illegal.
Both are not true.
But he's a smoooooth operator, Sade, so he'll keep saying it. He repeated the illegal lie during the debate and the moderators actually did fact check him about their completely legal status. His response? Put this on the GOP headstone:
"the rules were you guys weren't going to factcheck."
Because that is all they have. Lie after lie after lie. And with Vance, wrapped up in prettier language, but still LIES.
His stance on abortion was couched (see what I did there?) in flowery language like "pro family" and that he is sympathetic - even "knows a woman" who had an abortion. (Hint: We all do whether we are aware or not.) But from his own campaign website (scrubbed, but the internet is forever, JD), he is firmly ready to see abortion completely stopped:
Make no mistake, that push continues across this country. Not just surgical abortions. Louisiana has now reclassified the abortion drugs mifepristone and misoprostol as schedule IV controlled substances, which will now come with prison terms of up to five years for those caught in possession without a prescription. Daily, women's choices are being ripped from their hands by MAGAty, Christofascist men like Vance. Women being forced to travel to find abortion medical care. Women dying from being denied medical care when complications arise. Children and women being raped - something Vance has called "an inconvenience" - and coming up pregnant and having no recourse.
I have stated very clearly many times - I may be 58, which as my gynecologist reaffirmed at my appointment yesterday is late to still be on the front side of menopause and having intermittent periods, but if I came up pregnant? There would be no question in my mind. I would have to get the hell out of this state and travel to have an abortion. Because there is no way I would realize it within the six week ban here. I can afford to buy a plane ticket, put the gas in the car. But what about the myriad women who cannot? Medical care, and yes, abortion is medical care - whether purely a choice or stemming from an acute crisis - should not be some luxury item like a vacation to Barbados. It is a woman's choice. We are not incubators as the GOP would have us classified.
Trump's been going around saying he saved the ACA - he did not. John McCain did. Trump tried everything to kill it. Vance stood at that podium last night reiterating that Trump kept it from "collapsing." HE. DID. NOT. He and Republicants have tried repeatedly to repeal it.
On and on it went. In her article in The Guardian, Moira Donagan wrote, Trump’s running mate had the greasy self-assurance of someone used to lying to people he thinks are stupid.
And there's the rub. He knows he's lying. He knows who he is lying to. He knows they are intellectually incurious. He knows they are bigots and racists and Nazis and white nationalists, and religious zealots. They (some) may even know he's lying, but all that matters to them is that he is reaffirming what they want to believe, what they are too lazy to research, what keeps their bigotries warm and cozy. This is why it is a waste of time to try to reason with them. You cannot speak truth to willfully, belligerently ignorant.
Lying like this was once campaign ending stuff. Hell, candidates like Trump and Vance would never have made it off the launching pad. Once upon a time, there was integrity on the right. Disagreements and views on policy? Absolutely. But not this type of shit. You never had a MTG on the floor of Congress showing a blown up photo of the President's son naked. But then you also never had a losing President refuse to accept the results.
Vance has been slimy and cagey in interviews when asked how he would have handled the situation over how Mike Pence handled it. Would he have certified the election results? Like an eel covered in Vaseline he always evades the words yes or no. He says he would have kicked it back to the states to offer up alternative slates of electors. Translation: He would do whatever his overlords requested he do. That is why Pence is not the current VP candidate. That and the fact that Trump's minions who erected a gallows and spread shit on the walls in the Capitol were recorded shouting, "Hang Mike Pence! Hang Mike Pence!"
Last night, when it came up, when Walz asked Vance if, in fact, Trump had lost the 2020 election, Vance refused to answer. He rambled and said he is "focused on the future".
I'm with Tim Walz: "That was a damning non-answer."
That should be run over and over and over in every ad by the Harris/Walz campaign. And THAT should be beyond disqualifying. But it was a non-answer designed to keep the MAGAt horde's torches and pitchforks at bay. To keep Peter Thiel's money happy. To keep Trump from throwing more ketchup on the Mar-a-Lago walls. Truth has no home in that party.
An hour ago my husband and I dropped our ballots off here in Florida. Sorry, DeJoy, I see you and am not taking a chance on your mailbox dickishness. We have done what we can in this new state of ours. And we have cast our votes for Harris and Walz, for women's rights, for transgender protections, for the environment, for our granddaughter, for democracy, for the world at large.
Believe their lies at your, and our, peril. Vance is polished, but a polished turd is still a turd.
I'm with Mark - #LiarLiarVanceOnFire
This nightmare election season can't end quick enough. Trump is a nightmare and Vance is worse.
Posted by: Nikki in NYC | Saturday, October 26, 2024 at 05:10 PM