Even Fox News Isn’t So Sure About JD Vance

When I first saw this introduction to former Congressman and current Fox News anchor Trey Gowdy’s interview with Donald Trump’s Vice-Presidential nominee JD Vance, I literally could not believe what I was hearing. All my years spent in politics has led me to a default stance where I see the Fox News branding and my brain prepares itself to be inundated with the most racist, naïve bullshit imaginable.

This is…not that. It’s not that at all. You keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it never comes. Gowdy just beats JD Vance to a pulp with it. This is the most devastating takedown of the “childless cat lady” man that I have seen yet.

This is a *Fox News* intro to a @JDVance interview. pic.twitter.com/lJIJxiFpoL

— Alex Floyd (@alexjfloyd) July 29, 2024

When Gowdy said “those of us who talk for a living make mistakes,” you could almost see the Fox News machine spinning up behind him in the background, getting ready to justify the most insane drivel anyone has uttered since the last A block on Fox News. But no, this was not yet another thinly veiled cover for racism or misogyny or any of the other bigoted and depraved reasons that Fox News anchors get up in the morning, it was actually an immensely well-thought-out campaign ad. Kamala Harris should buy airtime in every major market just so she can show this intro by Vance’s ideological ally to as many people as possible.

I genuinely do not think that a Democrat could deliver a more devastating line to JD Vance than “They’re Catholic nuns. Childless. Dedicated to God. Love this country. Living lives of service to others.” Not only does this intonation push back against Vance’s abhorrent belief that only women who have children can be valued by society, but it attacks him from the right, challenging his religious bona fides.

JD Vance converted to Catholicism as an adult, and while I do not wish to ever question people’s religious beliefs, I do have to wonder how a man who has spent years decrying “childless cat ladies” never had celibate Catholic nuns enter their head as a counterargument to his sexist bullshit. That he never adjusted this attack on half of America’s population to account for people in his own religious cohort just speaks to Vance’s sociopathic desire to appeal to whatever audience he believes will deliver him to power by sheer force of hatred.

In 2016, he thought his meal ticket was effete northeast liberals who wanted their biases against middle America validated, so he threw his entire family under the bus in a book to try to court the people who helped make Hillary Clinton the biggest presidential loser in modern history. After 2016 made it obvious that world was gone, he pivoted to reactionary politics, and the most online man in major politics began his work of making Democratic opposition researchers’ jobs the easiest gig in the world. JD Vance has courted and alienated a lot of constituencies during his rise to power, proving he only believes in his own ego. He’s so shameless and cynical about it, even Fox News couldn’t invent a reality in which JD Vance is appealing to anyone outside the cloistered MAGA tent.